Pass on Plastic

Pass on Plastic (PoP) is an awareness campaign focused on environmental sustainability. The project was designed to take a global issue, Climate Change, and find a way to take practical steps to promote environmental sustainability locally. The project promoted education and accountability for avoiding single-use plastics in our daily lives; while simultaneously engaging with multiple stakeholders to build community around a solution. We curated PoP to do three things: empower, educate and create community. We kicked off our month long awareness campaign with a one day conference hosted by the Climate Reality Network at The Lombardo Welcome Center at Millersville University. The one day conference introduced almost 70 attendees to the Global Shapers Network, the Lancaster Hub, and other stakeholders who held breakout sessions to reflect the themes of the awareness campaign. Breakout sessions included an introduction to the Climate Reality in Lancaster County, Petrochemical Buildout, Sustainable Business, Government’s Role in Sustainability and How to Detox from Plastic as an Individual. Partners for the event included the Global Shapers Philadelphia Hub, Climate Reality Network, Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority, City of Lancaster, and Millersville University. Our month long awareness campaign had four themes; one for each week of the month. They included Climate Reality 101, Government’s Role in Sustainability, Sustainable Business, and Plastic Detox. Over the course of the month we reached and engaged with over 3,600 people through social media, appeared on NPR: Smart Talk, and a number of blogs including one for Millersville University. Over 20 businesses engaged in discussion around passing on plastic and some made steps to replace existing plastic with environmentally friendly products. As a result of this project, the Lancaster Hub successfully recruited 5 new Shapers with hopes in continuing to promote environmental sustainability in our community. Plans for Pass on Plastic 2.0 are in the works for the next fiscal year.

Pass on Plastic 2.0

The main purpose of the week was to engage our followers by holding a plastic detox competition among members of the Lancaster Global Shapers Hub. We used the SCRAP game that Aaron Spangler created for our first Pass On Plastic project in the spring of 2019. The competition was meant to create an element of fun and to allow shapers to share their personal tips for passing on plastic in the hopes that this would be more interesting to our followers than simply sharing facts and tips generically from the hub’s account. 

The goal of the SCRAP game was to spark a conversation among our followers about the challenges related to passing on plastic. While brainstorming for the first Pass On Plastic project, we felt that many of the people promoting plastic-free or low-waste lifestyles often make it seem like an easy choice while ignoring potential economic barriers some people face that make reducing their reliance on plastic a more complicated decision. By ignoring larger economic factors that influence our everyday lives, advocates for low-waste lifestyles risk excluding members of the community with less economic power from discussions related to plastic pollution and climate change. Through our competition, we hoped to empower individuals by sharing ways that they can reduce plastic in their own lives while also making it clear that, in addition to individual action, collective action from our government and from businesses is an essential part of reducing plastic waste in our community.

The project objective was to share experiences detoxing from single-use plastic and cultivate community involvement by creating opportunities for participation and by gamifying content.

A specific goal for Pass On Plastic 2.0 was to include more shapers in the plastic detox competition. In 2019, three shapers participated in the competition. In 2020, five shapers participated in the game, sharing content on their personal instagram accounts to expand our audience beyond the followers of the hub account. We met our goal of three posts leading up to the week to get people excited, our goal of creating at least 5 story posts a day, and our goal of using 3-4 Instagram story polling or question features throughout the week. We primarily relied on Instagram for this project. Our engagement on Twitter is low because we don’t post often, and we were not able to post as strategically on Facebook because Maddie was coordinating posting for this project and does not have a Facebook account. To improve our reach in future projects, a goal for 2020 recruitment should be to find an individual interested in maintaining the hub’s social media accounts. 

By the end of the week, we gained 36 new followers on Instagram. We reached 469 instagram accounts and received 6,907 impressions overall. Our profile was visited 242 times, and the link to our petition was clicked 101 times through Instagram. We also received a shout out from the Lancaster County Solid Waste Management Authority who encouraged their followers to check out our content via Instagram story. We gained 158 signatures on our petition during this week.

For more information: https://www.instagram.com/lancshapers/?hl=en