Plastic Straws Begone

In the last unit of my elective class Biomimicry, we learned about fungi. We learned the different parts of a mushroom, and different decomposers and detritivores as well as composting and decomposition. We also learned about closed loop economies and closed loop systems versus linear economies. This is the difference between a product that supports itself and can be upcycled, or a product that is used and then discarded. Our class visited The Plant Chicago to learn about aquaponics. We toured their facility and did our own design activity. We also visited Interface, which is a sustainable carpet company founded by Ray Anderson. We learned about what it takes to make a large company sustainable. For this project, we picked a product to redesign. We had to research how the product is made currently, and then redesign our product to make it a closed loop system. We then compared it to Interface's "Mount Sustainability." This is a set of goals that interface set to become the most sustainable company, My project was actually able to reach the top of the mountain.

 

I did like this project because it was more of a redesign of an existing product rather than a total redesign. I am proud of the research that I did because my family has recently given up plastic straws. My favorite part of this project was drawing the systems. I liked this because it was more hands-on than just doing a slideshow. This project made me realize more and more that we need a solution to plastic straws. I think there are enough ways to make straws sustainable and eco-friendly, but everyone needs to come together to make it a reality.