Project Y

5 min readOct 25, 2016

Our three member team is consisted of Izabella, Katerina and Margaret- third year students of Communication Media and Culture department of Panteion University, Athens Greece. In the context of Dare to Challenge Lab under the supervision of our professor Betty Tsakarestou we were assigned project/challenge that has to do with Sustainable Development Goals with social impact. Our chosen SDG is Responsible Consumption and Production, which is about promoting resource and energy efficiency, sustainable infrastructure, and providing access to basic services, ECO life for all. It’s implementation helps to achieve overall development plans, reduce future economic, environmental and social costs. We will focus on raising awareness about reduce reuse and recycle norms through our platform and app.

Millennials: Generation Y

Our generation is technologically driven and -based on some international data analysis we will provide you later on- we are very concerned on having a social impact. Although on a local level, we have realized that technology is mostly used for self-promotional reasons. So our goal is to raise awareness about becoming the change you want to see in the world. Zoom out from ourselves and zoom in on responsible consumption and production, which is our chosen SDG (Sustainable Development Goal) for our project. Furthermore let millennials acknowledge efficient use of natural resources, recycling and reduction of waste through multiple campaigns and social experiments.

To begin with, we will analyze some key-words and subsequently provide some data to justify our projects goal.

Millennials are born between 1981 and 2000 and is prognosticated to make up the 75% of the global workforce by 2025 according to UYD. Millennials have formed their own culture which is shaped around the current economy, education, politics, social and technological transformation and brought a new era regarding ethics, traditions, core values and the catalyst that drives their life decisions.

For instance the economic crisis affected largely Europe in terms of migration. Generation Y realized that we actually live in a continent without border restrictions. It’s very common to study abroad and many people are leaving in order to find economic stability and safety in other countries. Moreover, our generation is very well known for its flexibility, and adaptability and risk taking. Undoubtedly this generation is about to enter the workforce and reconstruct the current worldwide approach towards economy, politics, social issues etc. developing new ways of the buy and sell procedure and generally the consumption patterns.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 12

Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns.

‘’Sustainable consumption and production is about promoting resource and energy efficiency, sustainable infrastructure, and providing access to basic services, green and decent jobs and a better quality of life for all. Its implementation helps to achieve overall development plans, reduce future economic, environmental and social costs, strengthen economic competitiveness and reduce poverty.’’ (http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-consumption-production/

This particular goal is focusing on economic growth -considering the fact that the population of the world is rapidly increasing- and then production is supposed to get as bigger but with less cost in terms of resource use, city waste disposals and pollution.

The general aim is to reduce our negative ecological footprint and raise awareness about the broad spectrum of the problem. All that, by using technology, which is an inextricable part of our lives, and a systemic approach and collaboration among each and everyone in the supply chain from the maker to the shopper. Furthermore, every person should be educated and better informed about natural environment and economical utilization from the early stage of their life till the end of it.

Generation y-consumption and production analysis

It has been a project of research for many organizations and individuals the hierarchy of needs of millennials. This generation hasn’t prioritized their needs as the previous generations did. They don’t seem to care for big purchases like a car, or a house in certain countries. They prefer to buy technological and luxurious stuff no matter the cost or environmental impact based only on their social status. Unfortunately this generation is obsessed with its self-promotion and as a matter of fact millennials make up 21% of consumer discretionary purchases which is estimated to be over a trillion dollars in direct buying power and a huge influence on older generations.

According to a specific research based on the consuming behavior of millennials, we found out that more than 50% of the millennials are conscious regarding their purchases and usually they prefer products of companies that support a cause. More specific 37% of them seem to buy products or services from companies that support a certain belief of theirs, even if it means a higher cost.

(http://www.millennialmarketing.com/who-are-millennials/)

We, as a team based on the upper research, aim to inform, update, educate and raise the interest of the millennials initially of those who belong in that already kind of aware 50%, about the sustainable development of the environment. We believe that this target group will respond immediately and hopefully will motivate more and more people to help find solutions. We will achieve this by supporting already existing campaigns like H&M’s CONSCIOUS — SUSTAINABLE STYLE, which technically encourages consumers to bring their old clothes for recycling and give them 15% discount on next purchase. Moreover, H&M has its own clothing collection made out of recycled fibers. We will also try to organize our own campaigns and social experiments by using technology in the selfie era in order to contribute into raising awareness, decreasing the disposable waste and create a balanced environment.

One key part of our project is the creation of a phone application very much alike to Snapchat interface with a great difference: it’s main goal is that the users will make a social impact by using it. Photo stories of streets full of rubbish, food thrown away, fibers burnt… with the location turned on the authorities will get notified that this place needs to be cleaned. Let’s change the way our city looks and raise the quality of life!

Supervisor: Betty Tsakarestou

co-editors: Izabella Kefala Katerina Kaouni

Project Y

Written by Margaret Georgiadou