Human Practices

Investigation

Experiments often need to be combined with practice to help us solve social problems better. So we visited factories, companies, schools, communities and other iGEM teams! We distributed questionnaires to the public and preached synthetic biology to freshmen, hoping to understand the current situation of resources and energy in society by Human Practices.

Part 1: Questionnaire Survey

We distributed three different questionnaires to students, community residents and Wuhan residents.

(1) Questionnaire One--to students

We investigated nearly 300 students through online research and offline interviews. The survey questionnaire contains twelve questionnaires, and some of them were selected for analysis.

How to deal with the discarded express cartons?

We found that more than half of people chose to throw away the materials directly, which is not eco-friendly and not conducive to the reuse of materials.

(2) Questionnaire Two--to Community residents

We went to the residential area of Xujiapeng, distributed 100 questionnaires offline and conducted interviews. The results are summarized as follows

Are you satisfied with the current recycling situation in your community?

Many people are not satisfied with the current situation of waste paper recycling. Therefore, we need to pay more attentions to waste paper recycling and publicity efforts.

Do you think it is feasible for recycling and energy utilization of express cartons?

Only a very small number of people questioned the feasibility of recycling and energy use. Most people showed high wishes for recycling and energy utilization.

(3) Questionnaire Three——to Wuhan citizens

We went to Wuchang district, Hanyang district and Qiaokou district of Wuhan for field investigation of offline questionnaires and collected 100 questionnaires. The results are summarized as follows.

How much do you know about biomass energy?

In the survey of understanding biomass energy, more than half of the people are unfamiliar with it or just have heard of it. Only a few people know well about it. The conclusion is that we need to strengthen the publicity of biomass energy.

(multiple choices) Where do you think biomass energy can be applied?

In the survey of biomass energy application, people thought that the biomass energy is widely used in the fuel industry, production and processing industry, beauty industry and power industry.

Do you think biomass energy products are completely safe and reliable?

Most people believed that biomass energy is safe and reliable. Only 14 percent questioned the safety of bioenergy. The safety of biomass energy is still a considerable issue.

Part 2: Interview Survey

(1) Interview of express station and recycle station

Through interviews with many express delivery outlets in our school, we found that all express delivery outlets adopted almost the same strategy for recycling the express boxes. And the complete express boxes were repeatedly packaged and sent out, while the broken boxes were picked up and sold. Whether to leave cartons at the delivery point is up to the students’ own will, but most of them clack the awareness of recycling express boxes. Waste paper boxes were finally delivered to the packaging factory for recycling.

(2) Restaurant interview

Merchants are willing to choose eco-friendly tableware, but they more care about the price of bio-plastics. The eco-friendly tableware and packages currently on the market are more expensive than traditional plastic products which will hinder most customers. If the price issue can be solved, the bio-plastic products will have a better market.

Part 3: Field Research

（1）Visiting Recycled Plastics Factory

Yaodong company is a professional plastic manufacturer in Wuhan, producing ABS plastic particles, PP plastic particles, PS plastic particles as well as PA plastic particles. With an annual output of 800 tons, there is a professional production base and advanced manufacturing technology perennial supply of recycled ABS.

After the visit, we found that most of the factories nowadays harnessed physical methods, such as heat treatment and reprocessing for recycling plastic. This is still not a scientific and environmentally friendly method, so we need to develop the use of biological plastics, from the root to solve the problem of white pollution.

（2）Visiting Ecoplast Technologies Inc

Ecoplast Technologies Inc is a global oriented high-tech environmental protection new material and clean technology enterprise focusing on the research, development, production and sales of bio-plastics and products. The company has become the world's second largest starch-based bioplastics enterprises. It provides comprehensive bio-plastic packaging solutions to many global enterprises, including fortune 500 enterprises, to jointly realize the plans and goals of environmental protection, energy saving and carbon emission reduction.

The company staff warmly welcomed us, introduced the advantages and characteristics of bio-based materials, and further verified their unique properties through experiments. Meanwhile, they showed us around the production workshop to understand the development of bio-based plastics in recent years.

After the visit, we concluded that the most important issue to promote bio-plastics is still the cost. PHB material has no problem in terms of performance, but the current cost is too high, limiting its widespread use. Several large companies have consciously in the development of biological plastic products as a strategic reserve strategy. To promote the development of biological plastic, We need to invest more time and energy in production and research.

（3）Visiting National Energy Administration

We know that the development of biomass energy in China is still in its infancy, but it has a great future. Traditional fossil energy is being exhausted, and new energy must be developed. Nuclear energy, solar energy, wind energy and biomass energy are all new clean energy sources, among which biomass energy has the largest amount of elemental substances.

Part 4: Compared with last year's survey

(1) Increasing participants

Only 261 people took part in the survey at last year. This year, the number has increased to 488. Furthermore, the scope of our research object is wider. We only surveyed college students and teachers while in this year we conducted a survey on three groups of people, including students and teachers at school, community residents and randomly sampled Wuhan citizens. Collecting more date increased the credibility of our investigation.

（2） Enhancing influence

In the last year, we found that iGEM and synthetic biology are relatively new to people, less than half of college students knew about them., Surprisingly, in this year, nearly 70% of interviewers said they knew iGEM and synthetic biology. They knew that the iGEM team of HUBU, conducting a project of synthetic biology, won the silver prize last year a, which is the top ten news stories of HUBU. In this year, we introduced our project to more people on and out of campus, further boosting the influence of iGEM and synthetic biology.

Meetup

1. Community of China iGEMer Community Meeting

Two members of HUBU-WUHAN team (Mr. Xue and Mr. Ma) participated in the CCiC to report the project results and present the research posters.

After the report, the judges gave their suggestions on PHB production, experimental treatments, production, and PPT demonstration. One judge had done PHB production projects previously, and use the similar model as what we are using currently. He suggested that we should improve the production route of isobutanol based on our achievements last year. Prof. Nan Zhang pointed out that the logic of each page of the PPT was intermittent, and the PPT should consider the audience's level of knowledge on synthetic biology to avoid preconceived ideas. If we want to do a startup project, we should also consider the input and output of the whole project and whether it can bring economic benefits.

In addition, we also communicated and cooperated with other teams, discussing the experimental ideas, progress, results and difficulties. We build the cooperation with the team of Xiamen University (XMU).

2. iGEM Meetup of Central China Area

At the end of August, we communicated with iGEM teams from five universities in central China about the current experimental progress and problems, learning from the projects of other universities, and giving suggestions to each other for improvements. The discussion among different universities enhanced the friendship of iGEM teams in central China, and also improving our projects through an open and warm discussion. We realize that our progress is relatively behind, and we will work harder to improve our productivity the next two months.

Team:HUBU-WUHAN/Human Practices