Video Reflection 2: The Story of Bottled Water

WOW! The Story of Bottled Water was truly one of the most inspiring video I've watched in a while, it completely changed my perception towards bottled water. Me, being brought up in Hong Kong, had always been taught that drinking straight from tap is no good. This is because Hong Kong's water are sourced from China in old and corroded pipes, which causes the water to have an unpleasant metallic taste, so filtering and boiling is needed to have "clean" water suitable for drink. I guess the bottled water industry seriously did a great job in marketing, for scaring us, consumers to believe in them that bottled water is actually worth to buy, making us think that tap water is not suitable to drink. Other than that, we humans (me anyways) are all super duper lazy, and love to think "if money cant solve it, then its not a problem". Therefore, even thou I have quite a few water bottles at home, I still can't be bothered to bottle up a bottle water to bring with me. As much as the guilt that I feel when I bring my bottle of mount franklin to the cashier, I still shamefully cant be bothered to bring my own water. But after this video, knowing all the plastic bottles will just be sent and buried in someone else's backyard (another shameful example of us using money to solve our own problem) and drinking bottled water is as bad as a pregnant woman smoking, I am definitly going to change my laziness, to help making an effort to make the world a better place!

Apart from the dramatic news that this video delivered me, I'm also very impressed by how marketing can make a huge difference in a product as well. I've always been wondering and complaining about why industrial design students need to do marketing subjects?! Now, I know... for a product or business to be success, marketing strategies take up a big and important role in the process too. To create a problem and to seduce customers. Even thou the marketers created the problem of "tap water is dirty to drink", cleverly, industrial designers took up this point and designed bottles to solve THE problem.

"Bobble" is a water bottle that comes with a colourful filter inside, it claims to take care both our bodies and the planet at the same time.

Eco-redesign

Here is the result of our group.

Video Reflection 1: Giving Packaging a New Life

The videos showed very interesting ways to recycle recycling materials, like paper, glass, aluminium etc. Before viewing the videos, i always thought peeling off labels on cans and plastic bottles or separating colours of glasses are done by human power. I am amazed by how high tec and systematic recycling is.

Although recycling is a great approach, none the less, we shouldnt forget recycling uses up a great amount of energy too. This made me realised, being a designer, apart from designing with more recyclable materials, thinking about using less material will be even better! Truely "Less is More".

To reduce the energy used to recycling, I believe everyone of us should start with taking up the habit of sorting recyclable garbage at home. Like, to have 3 bins at home, for paper, aluminium and glass. Me being myself, although i have a big bucket just next to my bin at home. I am always too lazy to recycle my rubbish, just because sometimes I am too lazy to rinse clean the bottles and cans or peeling off the plastic or metal bits from the papers. And i am always very annoyed bout the fact that, how much rubbish me and my flatmate can produce within 1-2 days, that we have to drag ourselves out to the rubbish room. After watching the videos and reflecting, I promise that i am going to start recycling today and take up the idea of designing with recyclable materials and use as less materials as possible in my future designs!

Ecological footprint

I've calculated my ecological footprint from http://www.myfootprint.org/ and I am kind of surprised about the result. I thought my carbon footprint would be the highest among the other footprints, cause I travel between Hong Kong and Sydney at least once a year. But apparently my food and Goods & Service footprints are quite a lot higher than Australian average. From this, I've learned even the smallest thing in daily life can make a difference to the earth. Like my mum had always been telling me to eat organic food, for less toxin being consumed and unplug switches whenever theyre not in used, cause switches give out radiations?! But after this questionaire, I realised theyre not just for our own personal health, but it helps to reduce ecological footprint on Earth too! While I was doing this calculation, I've also sent it to my friends, hopefully theyll be as shock as I am and start to make a difference too.