Lau Jun Cheng Justin (SDE), Lim Zheng Kai (SoC), Megan Sonali Lourdesamy (FASS), Ng Wen Ching (FoE), Tan Zhi Ming Jaswin (FoE)
Academic Advisor: Ms. Sadaf Ansari
Our group aims to investigate if an increase in awareness about environmental impact of consumer habits could lead to a positive change in sustainable behaviour. As residents of Ridge View Residential College, our meal plan includes food options from Sarpinos. During the course of our stay, we have noticed a particular wasteful consumer trend at Sarpinos (YIH branch) – consumers prefer to order food in take-away corrugated cardboard boxes instead of paper plates, even when they consume the food in the covered spaces around the outlet. Our research shows that corrugated cardboard boxes have a much larger carbon footprint as compared to paper plates. This prompted us to tackle this problem of food packaging wastage for our project. We intend to conduct our fieldwork and encourage patrons to make the switch to paper plates in a 3-stage process. In the first stage, we will observe and tally the typical number of consumers who do opt for paper plates. In the second stage, we will display a poster prominently at the front of the store to motivate people to choose ordering on paper plates over cardboard boxes. In the final stage, we will request the Sarpino employees to assist by asking customers if they really need a box. We will monitor and document the trend over this 3 week period to find if there would be an increase in the uptake for paper plates due to the increase of awareness.
Keywords: Culture and Lifestyle Trends, Responsible Consumption, Campaigns, Behaviour suvey, Single use plastics, Food packaging