Design Competition for a Water Bottle and Sandwich Packaging: Plastic Re-imagined Alternative Vision

Design Competition for a Water Bottle and Sandwich Packaging: Plastic Re-imagined Alternative Vision

THE CHALLENGE
The Competition challenges participants to present a design solution for the problem of single use plastics focusing on plastic bottles and sandwich packaging. The brief is to design an alternative water bottle and sandwich packaging solution for visitors to a London Zoo. The proposed solution should solve the problem of plastic use and provide an aesthetically pleasing and hygienic design solution that engages visitors with the issue of plastic pollution.

THE CURRENT ISSUE WITH PLASTICS
Plastic which is very durable and versatile is petroleum-based product made from oil and natural gas. Designed to last forever, means it is not a suitable material for quick disposable packaging as it does not degrade easily. And when it does breakdown, the result is the release of harmful chemicals into our environment.

Annual level of plastic bottles is set to top half a trillion by 2021. This will affect and further jeopardising oceans, coastlines and other environments. A million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute, equivalent to approximately 20,000 bottles every second driven by an apparently high desire for bottled water.

With fewer bottles collected for recycling and just 7% of those turned into new bottles, most instead end up in landfill or in the ocean, it has become a major issue affecting our environment. Over 10m tonnes of plastic is estimated to leaks into the world’s oceans.

Plastic contamination is now found widely from tap water to sea salt. We could reduce this problem by recycling all plastics and reducing production but this is not practical. Another solution could be use of bio-based or certified compostable plastics over petroleum-based plastic material.