Challenge: For this project, we set out to work in pairs to produce a creative presentation of a sustainability issue within the city centre.
Solution: When observing the streets of the city centre to start building some ideas, it was evident that there was a litter problem, especially with shopping bags. We decided to collect data which aimed to provide insight into what type of carrier bags were being used the most to see how sustainable the people of Newcastle are. We found that the most popular types of bags were multi-use plastic and paper bags. This brought us to a plastic vs paper debate where we began to look at carbon emissions and their equivalence to other things that use energy. We formulated some sketches and found a common theme of comparison to local monuments. Here we created multiple models demonstrating the amount of carbon produced in comparison to other objects, most notably, the greys monument, showing the amount of bags collected over a week. We developed the project to be interactive where viewers could build up a model of their bag usage and display it on the screen directly opposite the greys monument itself.
