Say No To Plastic
Why it’s time for Australia to ban plastic bags
China has had a ban on thin plastic bags in place since 2008 and many third world countries including Ethiopia, Eritrea, Rwanda and Somalia have already banned plastic bags(1). The UK saw an 85% reduction in plastic bag usage within 6 months of introducing a 5p charge in 2015 for plastic bags in all supermarkets and large high street stores (2). So isn’t it time Australia joined the party?
For me this started as a project for my Interaction Design course. But having completed the assignment — designing an app over 9 weeks according to a prescribed design brief — it’s a subject that I’ve become pretty passionate about. But more on that later.
So what was this project all about? I chose the design brief of Change — how can we use technology to help people change their behaviour in order to bring about social or environmental change? I looked at plastic bag use, and how we might reduce the staggering 10 million single-use plastic bags that we use every day (3) in Australia? I started with the point of view that people are happy to reduce their plastic bag usage and will do so if we can find ways to make it easy for them.
I started with needfinding interviews where I asked users about their plastic bag use and whether they had thought about reducing it. I found that people were pretty inspired hearing good news stories & that they would happily show their support for a ban but weren’t sure how. I also found that people were keen to reduce their plastic use and typically had a drawer full of ‘green’ cloth bags in their kitchen but often forgot to take them when they went shopping.
These insights led to brainstorming a number of ideas for the app, of which the top 4 were:
- Education and good news stories about how other countries are reducing plastic bag use
- The ability to set a reminder to take your cloth bags with you when you shop
- Easy access to sign a petition calling on the State government to make changes.
- Contact details to ask your local supermarket what they are doing about the problem.
Storyboards illustrating the Set Reminder & Sign Petition concepts.
After testing some paper prototypes with users I reduced the app tasks down to the top 3: Education, Set a reminder and Sign a Petition. The ‘Contact your local supermarket’ task didn’t resonate with users.
The next step was to build a digital prototype, which went through a number of revisions based on user testing.
The biggest design change was to make the Home page a scrolling page with a pointer or link for each task. Starting with education on the impact of plastic, then moving on to tips to reduce your plastic bag use and a link to sign the petition. I made these changes after users found that the tasks were hidden under a couple of navigation steps and needed to be more obvious.
Feedback from users includes the fact that they love the visuals and simple design and that it’s easy to navigate. View the prototype at https://share.proto.io/Z62HNH/
What’s been really exciting (apart from the fun I had working through the design process) is that a popular current affairs show on TV (Channel Ten’s The Project) has just launched a campaign to ‘Ban the Bag’, and started a petition to lobby the State governments in NSW, QLD & WA — the 3 Australian states that don’t yet have a ban in place. The public have really got behind the petition so hopefully Australia is on the way to reducing plastic bag use, in the same way that the UK, China and many other countries have done. In the meantime I’ll keep reminding everyone who’ll listen to take their cloth bags shopping.
Sources
2. Gov.uk https://www.gov.uk/government/news/billions-fewer-plastic-bags-on-the-streets
3. CleanUp.org http://www.cleanup.org.au/au/Campaigns/plastic-bag-facts.html
