Integrated Human Practices

Education & Engagement

Surveys

Our team distributed 2 different surveys to the students in G.T. College in order to understand their awareness of plastic pollution.
600 people took the survey.

Survey 1

Question 1

Conclusion:

Survey respondents usually recycle plastics by putting the product into the recycling bin

In question 1, the statistics state that the general public usually recycles plastics by putting the said product into the recycling bin, and only a small portion of surveyees don’t recycle. A possible reason to explain that is the public is getting aware of the plastic pollution problem, and recycling bins are becoming more and more common as it is everywhere in Hong Kong, it is easy to approach. Comparing to recycling bins, it is less convenient for citizens to hand plastic waste to the recycling center and that should be the reason why not many surveyees are doing that.

Question 2

Conclusion:

Survey respondents overestimate the duration of plastic bottle decomposition

According to the data shown above, a large percentage of surveyees (nearly 40%) believe that plastics take 700 years or above to degrade, which is much larger than the correct answer of 450 years, which only about 30% of surveyees got it correct. We can deduce that the general public has an awareness of the long natural degradation time of plastic, but also severely overestimate the duration. This indicates only a superficial awareness and a lack of deeper understanding or knowledge on the issue. It is probably caused by media such as newspapers, online videos or textbooks only stressing the severity of plastic pollution without real data. The public may also not have sufficient reason or motivation to do their own research into the issue.

Question 3

Conclusion:

Survey respondents lack a deep knowledge about different types of plastics

Referring to the data shown above, we have an even split between the options provided, with Polytetrafluorethylene being of the highest percentage at 25%.The reason many chose PTFE could be due to its unfamiliar, long name (its commercial name is Teflon) We can deduce that the surveyees don’t usually know the specific details of plastics or their various degrees of harm to the environment. Once again, this shows a lack of deeper knowledge.

Question 4

Conclusion:

Survey respondents overestimate the specific amount of waste generated per individual

According to the data shown above, around 40% of people believe that 0.53 kg of plastic waste are generated per individual in Hong Kong, which has a much higher percentage compared to the correct answer of 0.34 kg. This shows that the surveyees are aware that they are consuming large amounts of plastic products but overestimate the specific amount of waste generated per individual.

Survey respondents underestimate current efforts of plastics recycling

Referring to the data above, the vast majority of surveyees believe that the recycling rate in Hong Kong is lower than 10%, while the correct answer is 14% (This includes plastics recovered at landfills by the government). We can observe that the surveyees generally have a high awareness level of the severity of the problem at hand, but underestimate current efforts to solve it. This points to a generally pessimistic view of the plastic pollution issue.

Question 6

Key for Question 6:
Blue--Current recycling methods are fine (9.0%)
Red-- We need to search for better ways to break down / degrade plastics (28.6%)
Yellow-- We need to educate more people on the matter (33.3%)
Green-- The government needs to make recycling more accessible (29.1%)

Conclusion:

91% of survey respondents believe the current recycling methods are not enough

According to the data above, nearly all of the surveyees believe that the current recycling methods are not enough, and either want to search for better ways to break down plastics, educate people on the matter, or for the government to apply more resources to make recycling more accessible. The three methods have similar number of supporters which means that they should all be improved and are equally important. It can also support the usage of PETase, which can breakdown a specific type of plastic, polyethylene terephthalate, in an indirect way.

To conclude, people are extremely aware of the plastic situation, but little know about the actual data. They commonly put plastic products into recycling bins. They also agree that current recycling methods are not enough.

Survey 2

The aim of this survey is to investigate the public’s general habits of using plastic.
Number of respondents: 479 students

Question 1

Survey respondents generally have a habit of using plastic products in daily life.
After analysing the results from the second survey, in question 1, data shows that more than half of the surveyees (53.4%) have a habit of using plastic products in their daily lives occasionally, while a large proportion of surveyees (24.8) have a habit of using plastic products in their daily lives very frequently. Therefore, we can conclude that plastic products are being frequently used by most people in daily life.

Question 2

Survey respondents use food packaging most frequently among the plastic categories listed above.

In question 2, we can see that among the four choices (plastic bags, product packaging, industry and food packaging), food packaging is the most common plastic product category that surveyees use (61.8%).

Question 3

The majority of survey respondents don’t recycle plastics often.

In question 3, a similar amount of surveyees recycle plastic products most of the time (26.9%), about half of the time (26.7%), and seldomly recycle plastic products (29.8%). Less than half of the surveyees exhibit a habit in recycling plastic products.

Question 4

Survey respondents generally assume that the most likely reason for increased use of plastic products is they are easily available.

In question 4, approximately half of the surveyees believe the most likely reason for increased use of plastic products is because they are easily available in daily lives (52.1%). Also, a large proportion of surveyees (26.4%) think that the increased use of plastic products is because of its relatively low cost compared to other products.

Question 5

In question 5, a similar amount of surveyees recycle plastic products most of the time (26.9%), about half of the time (26.7%), and seldomly recycle plastic products (29.8%). Less than half of surveyees exhibit a good habit of recycling plastic products.

Question 6

In question 6, approximately half of the surveyees believe the most likely reason for increased use of plastic products is because they are easily available in daily lives (52.1%). Also, a large proportion of surveyees (26.4%) think that the increased use of plastic products is because of its relatively low cost compared to other products.

Question 7

Survey respondents believe that a small fee in plastic products is enough to stop common usage of disposable plastics.

In question 7, most surveyees (33.8%) believe if plastic products have a fee attached them, over $1.5-$5 will be the price point they stop using plastic products. Some surveyees would rather not use plastic products if they are in any way charged.

Question 8

Most survey respondents believe that eco-friendly products can replace plastic products.

In question 8, more than half of the surveyees (62.9%) believe that more eco-friendly products can sufficiently replace the function of plastic straws. This shows that most people have faith in more eco-friendly products’ ability in replacing plastic products.

Question 9

Most survey respondents think that more eco-friendly products are common and easy to find.

In question 9, a large proportion of surveyees (34.3%) slightly agree that more eco-friendly products are common and easy to find. And in total, 68.2% of surveyees agree (includes surveyees who strongly agree, agree and slightly agree) to that more eco-friendly.

Question 10

Survey respondents prepare substitutes most of the time.

In Question 10, we can see that similar amount of surveyees prepare substitutes (more eco-friendly products compared to plastic products) most of the time (23.7%), about half of the time (29.2%) and seldom prepare substitutes (25.5%) by themselves in daily life. Overall, only 3.8% of surveyees do not prepare substitutes by themselves in daily life, which is a positive result.

Question 11

Survey respondents think the most likely reason for people not using substitutes to replace plastic products is because they are hard to purchase and not common.

In question 11, almost half of the surveyees (45.6%) believe that the most likely reason for people not using substitutes to reduce the use of plastics is because substitutes are hard to purchase and not common, but actually this is a bit of a contradiction compared to the results from question 9 (please refer to above). This implies that people generally don't take action in reducing plastic use, usually out of convenience. People also don't take care of plastic waste substantially.

2. School Activity

G.T. College iGEM school activity – Get your lab cod-on

In order to increase the general knowledge about biotechnology, synthetic biology and seriousness of plastic pollution in our school, the GT iGEM team conducted a booth activity on 8/7/2019. The activities include: Jeopardy, Actionary game, Hangman, RNA-Protein converting, a presentation on GT iGEM 2019 project, video watching and DNA origami.

In Jeopardy, the students have to understand a piece of vocabulary and answer with a definition of the word in question. Through the game, we hope that students can learn more advanced biology terms with their definitions, and recall their memories of terms they learned in previous biology lessons. Vocabularies include gene (a section of DNA that code for a function gene), polymerase chain reaction (create copies of DNA via thermal cycling using polymerase and buffer), and restriction enzyme (enzyme that cleaves DNA at specific sites) etc. Team members observed that barring some exceptions, most people had a high degree of engagement and participated well in the activity. A small amount of people understood vocabulary relating to biotechnology.

In Actionary game, the students have to use body language to describe a word to their group, which requires them to be thoroughly familiar with related biology concepts. As Actionary game is very popular among Hong Kong citizens, we think that students can enjoy the game with hilarious actions performed by their classmates, and thus having a strong impression of the vocabulary. Our team members observed that the students progressively got better at describing the biology vocabulary and generally had a great time.

During the presentation about synthetic biology and iGEM project, the team leaders attempted to engage with the students with questions and analogies, and they noted that the general performance was passive, silent and didn’t engage much in the activity, which means that the students were not that interested in the presentation format. This could be due to unfamiliarity with biotechnology and synthetic biology in general, since it isn’t taught in normal biology lessons in G9-10, or simply due to the lack of audience participation in the activity as it was simply a formal presentation.

In RNA-Protein translation, students had to decode a message using RNA- protein translation, just like a ribosome would. The aim of this game is to let students learn about translation, the important cell activity, with fun. Most students managed to complete the task well by decoding the hidden message “learn science”, “Charles Darwin” and “Francis Crick” and that participants were engaged during the assignment. This shows that they can learn the skill quickly.

The goal of Hangman is for students to guess a word without too many guesses. This requires their word association skills of biology and helps them to learn new vocabulary. Based on observations of team members, students were generally active throughout the task and are able to complete the set of questions. Vocabulary words include DNA, primer, electrophoresis, active site, substrate, tortoise, etc.

The students generally found the video watching and the DNA origami sections of the activity to be engaging and they participated strongly in the origami. We have found that video watching is an extremely effective way to capture students’ attention as well as introducing new concepts.

In general, the activity went smoothly and without incident, and from observations and feedback from participants and team members, generally students were able to demonstrate that they learnt a lot about topics related to synthetic biology in the process of the activity. Since there are rarely large scale events related to synthetic biology in which students can participate in, they also demonstrated that this event sparked interest in biotechnology and biochemistry as a whole. One problem we found is that the schedule was too tight and the students weren’t prepared enough before the activity started. If we are to host similar activities in the future, we will try and allocate more time between activities. Another problem is that students are not interested in formal presentations about biology, therefore this format should be avoided in future activities.