While I did get a reply from the school management team regarding trashbin installation, they told me that I couldn’t install a bin next to the school building door, as no one would be able to take care of it. Thinking of an alternative location, I soon came to think that the first floor of the dormitory buildings would be a good idea. Lots of dormitory students pass by the building lobby, and often they come down to the lobby to throw away their plastic bottles or aluminium cans. So, I thought that when they come down to do so, they could see the bins, and kindly give their waste to us.
But one problem was the vagueness of the term “waste.” In fact, the term “waste” in this context is quite a misnomer, as waste is a substantially broader and more negative term compared to what I am referring to. Our project mainly deals with discarded materials ranging from unused home appliances, kitchen utensils, plastic bottles, aluminium cans, or any type of waste that would be suitable for creating art. On the other hand, the word “waste” would encompass anything that is of no use for humans, such as compost, contaminated water, or even food waste—all of which are not used for junk art. The word “waste” also bears negative connotations and triggers repugnance. This vague terminology is because I couldn’t find a word in English that would adequately replace the Korean word “재활용품” (pronounced Jae hwal yong poom).
However, I couldn’t blatantly use Korean on the poster, since there are students and staff that cannot speak Korean. Thus, our team decided to make a poster and hang it next to the bin, so that passersby would easily recognize what the bins were for. I did try to do something similar on the bin, but apparently it wasn’t artistic. So, one of our team members beautifully drew a poster after I told her what information has to be in it. It was mainly about what we want, don’t want, and where we will be using the waste. Also, we included the contact information of our members so that people could call us in case we didn't notice the bins overflowing.
Another worry that came to mind was that people might throw junk anywhere, and might make the bin dirty. If you have ever heard of the “broken window theory,” you would know that it is a matter of time until the bin becomes abhorrently dirty if only one person carelessly throws waste away, and leaves it on the floor or makes the bin even a little bit dirty. But the converse of the Broken Window Theory states that there is a smaller likelihood of something becoming dirty if it is beautiful. So, we decided to put a beautiful piece of calligraphy on the bin. One of our members also learnt calligraphy, so she took over the work.
Then, I met with some of the team members who lived in the dormitories, and told them what to do. I told them to occasionally come down to the lobby to see if the bins were full. I gave them spare plastic bags in case the bins were overflowing along with demonstrating how to change the plastic bags. I also told them if the bags are full during the weekends, they should temporarily keep the bags in the lobby, since there isn’t staff during the weekends, who could open the storage room for us. I added that I will take the bags into our storage room on Monday.
Finally, we asked if we could install a movable bin and the poster in our dormitory to our housemasters so that students who live there would come down to throw away any waste they have. Although there are seven different dormitory buildings, we, unfortunately, could only install the bins on two of them. This was partly because we only had enough bins for two dormitories (one in the girls’ side and the other in the boys’ side of each building), but the other reason was that our team members resided in only two dormitories. We needed someone to monitor if the waste is sufficient, whether there was waste that we did not want (i.e.. food waste), and to replace the plastic bags if they were full. The person who would monitor the bins would be someone who lived in the dormitory buildings, because they would have to keep a close eye on the bins if they were to monitor the bins. So we chose the two buildings that our members lived in.
Our housemasters welcomed the idea, and also introduced the project during a dormitory assembly. They themselves also gave us waste, which was a huge help. I will come back a week later to collect the waste if they do not overflow. (Tbh, I kinda hope that there’s so much that they overflow😜)
Update 19/2/4- Check out https://www.instagram.com/p/Bt3braegeTk/
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