Sustainability Series: Know your Bloobin: Reducing Carbon Footprints in Daily Life
1. 6D Playbook
Define the problem
Lack of education and good habits within educational institutes has resulted in neglect of the 3Rs.
Determine your goals
- To reduce the total amount of wastage contributed by educational institutions in Singapore. Engage all primary school students to complete our challenges within our 5-week timeframe.
- To inculcate strong habits related to the 3Rs so students can continue to practise them as they grow up, making an impact on Singapore’s sustainable living goals.
Decide target behaviours and emotions
- Being participative, complete the weekly quizzes and challenges
- Enjoy the process of learning through challenges
- Excited to practise the 3Rs with friends and family
- Confident in knowledge and habits of recycling
- Teaching and correcting those who are recycling the wrong way
- Promoting more sustainable acts to others in their lives
Describe and profile your players
Target players: Primary school students and their teachers
- 7-year-old boy: purchases chips from the canteen during recess, enjoys doing quizzes
- 12-year-old girl: buys a packet drink daily, frequents the bookshop for unrecyclable stationery
- Teacher: wants to get her students to cultivate the 3R habits, contributing to Singapore’s zero-waste goal
Design your gamification strategy
Our 3-week challenge focuses on educating children regarding the 3Rs in the first week and getting them to do 3R challenges in the next 2 weeks. Students can also closely relate to our written storyline. At the end of certain challenges, to motivate the students to continue taking part in the challenges, we will award them with badges. At the end of the 21-day challenge, if the student has collected all badges, they will receive a certificate to recognise their efforts.
Diagnose and analyse your content
The challenges that we have implemented are relevant to our objectives as they educate the students on the 3Rs using flashcards, test their understanding using quizzes and make them apply what they have learned using photo/video challenges. Students are enticed to complete the challenges through gifts and certificates. Students get to complete one challenge per day with their friends and families, inculcating new habits into their lives. Feedback will also be collected regularly where necessary changes will be made.
2. Addressing the real-world challenge
Education institutions in Singapore cater to a large population of students, educators, and staff, resulting in their large consumption of resources, from paper to electronics, generating a significant amount of waste.
Recent studies have shown that an average student in Singapore uses around a whopping 11 kg of paper annually which is equivalent to cutting down half a tree. Furthermore, electronic waste (e-waste) from discarded gadgets, prevalent in educational settings, is one of the fastest-growing waste streams in Singapore. In 2020, Singapore generated over 60,000 tonnes of e-waste, however, only 6% of it was properly recycled.
Since 2018, 40% of items in recycling bins have been unable to be recycled because of unsuitable items being thrown in, resulting in contamination. Furthermore, household recycling habits have been poor, as shown in the drop of our domestic recycling rate to 12%, the lowest in over a decade.
We believe that instilling sustainable practices and habits in children during the formative years is crucial, as habits developed in education tend to continue into adulthood. Neglecting this aspect may lead to the continuation of through gamification, we aim to make sustainability engaging and habitual for educational institutions from students to staff alike.
3. Learning and Reflection
We’ve all had our 10 years of compulsory education and the waste generated by us during this time has harmed the climate. Each student uses bulky textbooks for each subject, consumes numerous sheets of paper daily and often owns multiple electronic devices like calculators and Chinese dictionaries as backups for examinations. Teachers frequently print lesson materials on paper too. At the end of the school year, heaps of textbooks, assignments and malfunctioning electronic devices are discarded, contributing to significant general and electronic waste.
This highlights the detrimental environmental impact of schools, especially over time. With Gametize, we hope to properly educate young students about the 3Rs on what they can do and how they can make an impact in improving our climate. We also hope to cultivate good 3R habits from young which students can carry into adulthood. By starting this campaign in schools, it could expand in the future where parents can play the games with their children and start new habits to contribute to sustainability.
During the project’s initial stages, we identified widespread misconceptions about the 3Rs, prevalent even among adults and educators. Realising the need for re-education and habit correction, we initially believed the lack of incentives deterred recycling. However, after doing some research, it showed that the primary hindrance was a lack of knowledge regarding proper recycling methods. Therefore, our strategy shifted to educating students first before providing a platform for practical application. This experience taught us that many issues have multiple root causes, requiring a holistic combination of solutions for effective problem-solving.
We also realised the importance of considering the needs and wants from our target audience’s point of view, instead of simply creating solutions with the primary goal in mind. On top of that, we felt that personalising our challenges was key in ensuring a high level of receptiveness and enjoyment among our players and preventing feelings of inability to relate.
All in all, this template would be helpful for teachers who are eager and passionate about imparting knowledge to students in a fun and engaging way but do not have a practical platform to do so. The charming and engaging nature of our platform and the challenges specially tailored for the young students have shown to induce plenty of meaningful action with regard to the new knowledge they learnt and the 3Rs! These would help nurture great sustaining habits in the students which would carry on in the long run!
Credits: [AY2023/24] G3 Team 4 – Jaren Chan Ding Jie, Tan Shu Yi Jillian, Zara Nomi Hartanto, Nur Hazwani Binte Muhammad Halmi, Sim Hui Ting Isabelle, Seth Koh Hau Jer, Wong Shi Chin, Tan Ying Ru