2018 Spring Studio: Bags
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After a mail art assignment and an exploratory workshop centering around subtlety and wonder, our class split into small groups for our final projects. This medium will track my process throughout the semester.
I initially began working with Lois Kim, another designer at Carnegie Mellon, but we eventually split due to diverging interests within the space of bags.
Our original focus was on disposable bags in American culture and how people in their early 20’s interact with and value them. Our goal was to include the values of companies in the final concept, as they are a significant stakeholder who is a part of the problem and solution. The basic premise is to emotionally connect a bag with a user to encourage usage, thus reducing overall bag consumption.
Research
My first objective is to understand what work has been done on sustainability and bags. This led me to Jonathan Chapman’s book: Emotionally Durable Design: Objects, Experiences, and Empathy and scouring the web for statistics on bags. This book broadened my perspective on what a bag should be and needs to be in order to be connected to a person.
“There is no point designing durable products if users lack the desire to keep them” — Jonathan Chapman
Example:
With more wear and dirt, the design and value of the shoe becomes more interesting. Thus, a consumer will be less likely to dispose of the shoes.
I’m conducting photo collection research to understand how people are currently repurposing bags and to hopefully identify positive deviants for bag usage. I’ve reached out to Frob Mob, a similar concept created by Frog Design to see if I can collect photos with their site.
I’ve created two Pinterest boards to collect ideas on sustainability branding for bags and different ways bags can be utilized.
Company’s Environmental Ethos
Patagonia
“The quality of Patagonia depends, to a large degree, on whether we can reduce our impact on the environment. This means auditing the materials and methods we use to make our products, taking responsibility for the entire lifecycle of our products and examining how we use resources at our buildings and facilities.”
http://www.patagonia.com/responsible-company.html
Trader Joe’s
This is the most environmentally focused information on the Trader Joe’s website. This screenshot is from their company timeline. The smaller text on the bag reads: “Is framing the bag and hanging it on the wall count as reusing or recycling?”
https://www.traderjoes.com/our-story/timeline
Conversation with Joe (Trader Joe’s East Liberty)
I was able to be in contact with a store manager at the sole Trader Joe’s in Pittsburgh, Joe.
“We go through about 10–15 bales each day, there’s 300 paper bags in a bale”
The paper bags they use are non-toxic, post consumer recycled cardboard; while Trader Joe’s does carry “standard” plastic bags, customers must ask if they want a plastic bag instead of paper. The brown paper bag design is the same nationwide, featuring the same sustainability focused message which is intended to poke fun at the idea that most people forget that “reduce” and “reuse” are also parts of the “recycling triangle”.
“I don’t think we’ve ever seen anyone’s reusable bags wear out”
Roughly 25% of shoppers bring their own bags in, Trader Joe’s reusable plastic bags, Aldi’s bags, or sometimes Trader Joe’s paper bags. Often times the same people will keep buying Trader Joe’s’s reusable plastic bags, according to Joe.
Next Research Steps
“I remember to bring my reusable bags by…”
This is a Candy Chang inspired design research probe intended to be implemented at the Trader Joe’s in East Liberty, the probe consists of a whiteboard, markers, and a couple laminated signs. I will see if the Trader Joe’s management team will be okay with this.
UPDATE: The Trader Joe’s corporate policy doesn’t allow for outside materials (probes, surveys, etc) to be posted outside the building. I will have to think of some sort of work around.
2nd Life for Bags Probe
I took photos of the different ways people were reusing plastic, paper, and ziplock bags and placed them on an axis of “mobility in usage” and “length of 2nd life”.
Insights
Most secondary uses for bags are for sedentary use, involving minimal transportation. Apart from bags used for waste collection, almost every bag could be replaced by a reinforced reusable bag. The majority of bags which used in a mobile setting were a form of protection for objects versus being used to hold multiple items.
Despite some users having many different uses for bags, almost every person whose relationship with bags I documented had a plastic bag full of plastic bags.
Research Questions for more probes
What are the critical moments in which someone remembers or forgets to brings bags to go grocery shopping?
At what point does someone decide to go grocery shopping?
Trader Joe’s Probe
“What tips would you give to customers for remembering to bring reusable bags?”
This questionnaire was posted in the break room of the Trader Joe’s in East Liberty for two weeks. Many of the responses are interesting in that a designed product or service might better afford such a solution, but they still rely on a human remembering. The tongue in cheek responses were inspiring as they hinted at the general notion that in the end, people would simply need to care more to remember their bags. Some of my favorite responses:
“Take B vitamins to help your memory”
“Give as part of kids chores, the task of putting the bags back in the car”
“I saw a ‘remember these come from trees’ sticker on a roll of paper towels. Now I always think of that”
Whole Foods “Deep Hanging Out”
I loitered at Whole Foods for an hour observing AEIOU (activities, environments, interactions, objects, and users) and for 30 minutes, marked how many people brought their own bags versus used a paper bag.
One of my biggest insights was how the express lines (10 items or less) was most popular and featured the least use of reusable bags. It looked as though most of the items bought could be carried within a much smaller bag than the Whole Foods paper bag as well.
30% of Whole Foods shoppers brought reusable bags
11% of Whole Foods shoppers in the express lanes brought reusable bags
Design Irony
I initially toyed with the idea of a bag which could fit in your wallet in response to seeing the significantly lower percentage of shoppers which brought their own bags in the “express lane”.
I’m going to explore creating an ironic company/movement around reinventing how to grocery shop by using plastic bags compressed to fit into wallets. This is a commentary on how many reusable bag companies claim to revolutionize shopping while creating products with the same pitfalls as other reusable bags with different branding.
My final reasoning for pivoting in this direction is that in a world saturated with “sustainable” grocery bags, I feel that creating another bag isn’t a step in the right direction.
Companies which claim to produce “sustainable” grocery bags. While I don’t know the life cycle of their materials, I do know that their “innovation” is merely putting smaller bags inside of a carrying bag or case.
Satirical Examples
In looking for the right tone to set, I’ve been looking to other examples of design satire.
The approach of “breaking character” to explain the satire has some allure, in order to ensure communication of the true message. However, for a concept involving bags, I see such an approach as being “too safe”.
A complete 4th wall break, I appreciate The Onion’s approach of addressing something people encounter often (paywalls) and emphasizing/focusing on a visitor’s guilt. It amplifies guilt while educating those who may not realize the importance of ad revenues for online publications.
Creating something which people actually and accidentally encounter or interact with would be an ideal project scenario. The direct parody of a “serious” product might not be possible for bags however, as the market for “sustainable” bags is fairly saturated.
My initial project ideas were for a fake bag company stemmed from satire similar to Share the Safety by the Yes Men. Like earlier examples, the satire had references to the Black Panther movement and received heavy media coverage.
This was a slightly different take by the Yes Men compared to their “Share the Safety” company. While being just as ridiculous, the message was more transparent: reducing beef consumption is more impactful than reducing number of showers.
Further Iterations
My project is a satirical marketing campaign that portrays plastic bags as a serious, important product in order to make a statement about human behavior and “eco-friendly” products.
It is meant for people who are in favor of sustainability, but are having difficulty changing their behavior; an example of this is buying reusable bags and frequently forgetting them. On a larger scale, a grocery bag itself has minimal environmental impact. Reducing meat consumption and airplane flights have far more impact, but grocery bags are an entry point towards directly addressing how basic habits must change. I hope that this project will act as a lubricant for moving people through the current mainstream focus on reusable bags onto more difficult and impactful areas of behavior change.
I still need to refine the satirical message and connect the surface level humor to a deeper theme.
Questions I need to answer
Where might these ad placements go?
Where might the lasting impact be?
How ambiguous should the satire be?
Ad Council Inspiration
To focus my final deliverables, I looked to emulate a PSA that Ad Council might produce. My two goals are to firstly encourage people to remember to bring grocery bags and to correct the misconception that buying reusable bags is automatically better for the environment and that plastic bags are always terrible.
A potential tagline for the campaign:
“It’s not about what bag you bring, it’s if you bring it”
These are two early drafts of ads I would include in the campaign. The first follows a reusable bag’s story (shot at home due to filming restrictions at grocery stores) and the second attempts to build sympathy for plastic bags. The second video is part of my overall effort to correct the unwarranted hatred for plastic bags. All dialogue came from news articles.
Feedback
There seem to be two campaign goals: people remembering bags and people critically thinking about sustainability. The critical thinking about bags isn’t very present visually and must be verbally explained. Looking to address the moment a person realizes they forgot their bag at the store may help. The satirical image with tally marks on the bag was the closest artifact which struck at both campaign goals.
Pivot
I needed to go further into research to create a richer argument. In simple terms, my new argument is this:
Plastic Bag Bans: Bad
The reasons are numerous, although the primary reasons are that the alternatives are worse for the environment and that plastic bag bans distract from the larger issue. When it comes down to it, a social shift needs to occur in order for grocery shopping to be conducted in a sustainable shift. Legislation banning single use plastic bags (the most common type of plastic bag bans) has misrepresented effects.
The next step is to embody this argument with a designed artifact or experience. Updates soon.
Facts
- Plastic bag litter was 1% of all litter before the ban, but was reduced 40% afterwards
- Nominal reduction
http://berkeleysciencereview.com/will-californias-plastic-bag-ban-help-environment/
- Chicago plastic bag ban (on “single use plastic bags” only lasted 16 months, isn’t there currently
- More paper bags used
- Retailers gave away for free plastic bags 4x thicker than standard to comply with new standard for “reusable”
- One grocer reported roughly a 50% decrease in bags given out before the ban BUT, likely due to the thicker bags not needing to be double bagged
http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/August-2016/Plastic-Bag-Ban/
- Plastic bag tax
- Current law in place
- $0.07 for a plastic bag
- 42% less bags used under the bag tax
- Marine life being killed is often not by bags (solid plastics are often the culprit) or fishing gear 500,000 deaths a year by plastic bags is false
- Most HDPE bags are made from natural gas and limited amounts at that
- HDPE bags use ⅕ the water of their closest competitor: paper (other types of bags use more)
https://reason.org/wp-content/uploads/files/california_plastic_bag_ban.pdf
- “Although recyclable paper bags can be diverted from landfill waste through recycling, nationally only 38 percent of them are”
- Paper bags take up 5x more space in a landfill
https://www.pacificresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/PlasticBagF_low.pdf
- Biodegradable plastic bags
- Must be composted NOT put in a landfill
- In a landfill, methane will be produced
- Marine life not highly impacted by specifically plastic bags
- “Great garbage patch” is misunderstood
- It’s mostly fishing gear, not plastic bags, and isn’t a solid island
- Stats
- The conventional HDPE bag had the lowest environmental impacts of the lightweight bags in eight out of nine impact categories;
- The biodegradable HDPE bag had larger environmental impacts than the regular kind;
- The starch-poly bag (similar to HDPE bags, but made of a mixture of starch and polyethylene) was worse yet, with the highest environmental impact rankings on seven of the nine categories examined;
- The non-woven polypropylene “bag for life” had to be used 14 times to get its global warming potential down to that of HDPE;
- Paper bags performed poorly on the environmental impact tests, and must be used four or more times to match the global warming potential of the HDPE bags; and, finally,
- Cotton bags were found to have greater environmental impacts that the conventional HDPE bag in seven of nine categories, even when used 173 times, which is needed for its global warming potential to drop down to that of HDPE.
#BanPlasticBagBans
I am planning on starting a Kickstarter and a StartSomeGood campaign to raise money with a short video on what happened in Chicago when they banned single use plastic bags.
I am still debating the specific application of the money, options ranging in cost and degree of levity.
Donate money to EDF (Environmental Defense Fund)
- Pay for poster/flyer on a billboard in Pittsburgh
- Donate money to NOVOLEX (plastic bag recycling company)
- Send plastic bags with messages in bulk to a politician
- Hire professional picketers (crowds on demand) at Whole Foods
- Go to production with plastic bags
- Illegally send plastic bags to Africa (bags currently banned there)
- Use to apply to join an incubator as a company
Final Concept
I started an online campaign: #BanPlasticBagBans. #BanPlasticBagBans is for grocery shoppers who want to make the “simple green” choices in their life, but aren’t aware of the nuances of sustainability.
I specifically chose to create a Kickstarter as the most common age demographic was college and young professionals, the type of people beginning to form grocery store habits.
Promo Video
With this promo video I wanted to make a humorous, memorable impression in regards to plastic bag bans. In short, plastic bag bans are not good.
In Alameda County, California (where single use plastic bags have been banned), media sources have trumpeted the 44% reduction in plastic bag storm drain litter. Yet, single use plastic bags only consisted of 1% of the overall litter before the ban. Alternatives to plastic bags have many issues; cloth bags must be used hundreds of times to have the same environmental impact of a HDPE plastic bag used once and one paper bag has 4 times more global warming impact compared to a HDPE plastic bag.
To address the common public sentiment (identified through interviews and secondary research) that plastic bags should banned, I used another common public sentiment: you shouldn’t put plastic bags on your head. By juxtaposing the ridiculous (plastic bags on head) and seemingly serious (plastic bag bans), I hope to change public perception of plastic bags. According to my research, people don’t think about bags when they shop; I hope with more light hearted campaigns like these, more people will think about their bags and begin to remember them.
Kickstarter Description
“Plastic bag bans are gaining momentum in the United States, but the negative consequences are numerous and the positive benefits are often misrepresented. The scapegoating of thin single use plastic bags distracts us from the the real issue; as a society, we must commit to changing our behavior and remembering to bring our own grocery bags.
The goal of $173 corresponds to the 173 times that a cloth grocery bag must be used in order to have the same global warming impact as a single use plastic bag used once. Money raised will be used to further the reach of this campaign. Any excess funds will be donated to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit dedicated to applying science to the fight for sustainability.
Learn more about the nuances of grocery bag sustainability at https://twitter.com/BPBBans and spread word of the movement through the hashtag #BanPlasticBagBans.
Disclaimer
Please do not place plastic bags over your own or any other person’s head. Doing so carries the risk of suffocation and death.”
