Unplastify Challenge for Education App

Plastic consumption is growing exponentially and plastic waste is ending up in the most remote places of our planet, affecting us in the most unimaginable ways. We believe plastic pollution is not about the material, but about its use and abuse. We need to re-design systems and change our behaivor in order to avoid single-use-plastic. 

Let’s change the human relationship with plastic. We need to inspire action, inform and provide necessary tools to implement change. 

Education is one of the key drivers for solutions, so we designed the The Unplastify Challenge for schools (UCS): a three months program where young students are invited to design and implement solutions to unplastify their schools.

The final event participants

More than 30% of plastics we consume are escaping the waste management systems and ending up in rivers and oceans (Plastiki, 2011). Globally, we consume an average of 100 lbs of plastic a year. More than half of that is from packaging, usually disposable. Which means that we use it for a few minutes or hours, and then it gets thrown away with 20% chances to get recycled. (Worldwatch Institute, 2015).

All the people in LatinAmerica are affected by this global issue. Simple changes in our behaviour can change this situation and inspire to lead change in a larger scale. Education is key to change this relationship.

During our pilot program we engaged more than 1900 teens in talks and workshops. 

100 teens signed up voluntarily for the Unplastify Challenge for Schools (UCS) 2019 that took place in 9 schools. 

3300 people from their overall communities changed their consumption habits (left plastic bags, started using reusable containers and bottles) with the participants leadership and projects. 

By 2020, engaging 50 schools we will be multiplying the impact. Every group that signs up for the challenge creates an impact at their school but also takes action in their community.

During 2019 we run our pilot educational program with Nat Geo’s support through an Explorer Early Career Grant.

We gave workshops and talks to teenagers of 15 /16 years old who were invited to rethink their relationship with plastic and engage in action to change their schools use of single use plastics. With schools as the starting point, this program’s reach also comes to their friends, families and neighbourhoods. Our focus on leadership, communication, impact and cooperation gives the participants of UCS the tools for today’s sustainable leaders. We are empowering young changemakers.

This pilot UCS was a great success but also a great learning experience to make our next challenge much better. We understood the importance of following up with the educators in each school we visited, to keep the teens engaged and the necessity for a better technological tool to empower the collaboration online. 

To take our program to the next level we need to engage with local communities of educators, to expand our reach to 50 new schools and engage the participants locally and also follow and guide the participating groups of the challenge in a simple but powerful app, to enhance communication and collaboration.

The UCS consists of a kick-off, the implementation challenge and a final event. The kick-off is a talk and workshop at the school where we explain the plastic pollution problem and  invite the teens to think strategies to unplastify their schools. At the end of the kick-off we invite the participants to join us voluntarily for the challenge : a 3 months competition in which they define, test, implement and measure results of those unplastifying strategies they initially designed in the workshop. The competition is in groups of 4 and each group has a mentor to help them. Groups are given assignments in different stages to complete and show their project’s reach. At the end of each stage, groups are awarded points in leadership, communication, impact and cooperation skills. The final leading 6 groups, at the end of the program are participants of the final event in which they present their projects results and impact and further plans to a jury of experts.

All the interaction between teens, educators and our team coordinators during the challenge occurs on an online platform.

During our pilot we engaged with more than 1900 teens in talks and workshops. 100 teens signed up voluntarily. We used a blog, tuned for this stage and it had its big limitations. Signing up was hard and we ended engaging the community with other platforms (instagram, whatsapp, email) because theinteraction of the blog used was limited.

The pilot was a prototype that showed us how participants interact and collaborate to understand the platform we need. We also learned how teens have more access to their phones than desktop or laptops, barely check emails and work inside social networks, unlike teachers who addressed us more by email. We need to unify communications to make them simpler and generate more engagement between participating groups and our educators.

In the 9 schools involved, teens designed 150 strategies and implemented more than 24 strategies and solutions to unplastify their communities, during the pilot. Showing and sharing their results wasn’t easy because data was in different formats. We need to do this in a simpler way to allow us to aggregate all strategies and solutions applied creating a reservoir of unplastifying solutions for our overall community. We plan to do this in our app, collecting data in a simpler way that allows us to share the results and multiply them.

Our solution brings together technology, empowering young students and solving an environmental challenge.

We are teaching young adults project management to become the new changemakers.

We give them tools and guidance but they search for their own answers and implement their strategies. 

In our talks and workshops we only INSPIRE AND SHAKE. We inform them about the problem and they are invited to participate. The UCS is not compulsory. 

As a result of our open approach, students become more involved and compromised with the project and results go beyond the challenge. Most of the participating teams continued leading unplastifying activities after the challenge.

Technology is the tool we are using to guide the whole experience and granting a simple app to manage their assignments and report their results will help us improve communication, stimulate more collaboration and multiply the access to strategies and results from all the teams.

In the program we engage with the whole school in the kick-off talk. As a result, all the school’s community becomes involved in the plastic pollution problem.

After this, we give a workshop for the 15 and 16 year olds. In this workshop they design strategies to unplastify their schools. 

After they have designed their own solutions, they are invited to participate in the USC. They are warned that they have the information, they have thought positive solutions and they are now responsible.

The teams that sign up for the challenge become more and more involved with the problem and contribute replicating the message in their school and communities.

All the school becomes involved in this game and like that becomes more aware of the situation. The extended community of the school starts being aware.

Examples from our pilot:

• A team in Mancedo Highschool Argentina lead the school to reduce 40% the use of single use plastics in the school another contacted the local supplier for cookies at the school to sell them with no packaging.
• https://desafiounplastify.com/2019/06/28/fase-3-como-podemos-medir-el-impacto/

• A team from Uruguay’s St. Clare’s increased in 25% the use of reusable bottles, organized beach cleanups, gave talks and recommendations in a nearby hotel. 
  • https://drive.google.com/file/d/1X1j3i1lPctDFXZJvgNpLyaLxM3amy3WJ/view
• A team from Montevideo’s Damaso Liceo built a giant reusable plastic’s statue with the help of the municipality to express the problem in a public plaza with the recolection of plastics from the school
• https://desafiounplastify.com/2019/05/29/montevideo-reciclado/
• https://desafiounplastify.com/2019/06/28/medicion-de-impacto-2/

2019:

• People currently serving : 1900
• 24 teams of 4 students 
• 9 schools
• 3 countries (Chile, Arg, Uru)
• 6 finalists

2020:

• People to be served in 2020: 8000 estimated.
• 80 teams 
• 40 schools
• 4 latin american countries
• 12 finalists

2025:

• People to be served in 2025: 25.000 estimated.
• 240 teams
• 120 schools
• 5 latin american countries
• 12 finalists

We measure our solution's positive impact with the following indicators:

KICK OFF PHASE

• # of schools visited  2019 : 9
  • 2020: (goal +40) . 
• # of students attending talks 2019: 1900
  • 2020: (goal +8000) 
• # students att workshops 2019: 650
  • 2020: (goal +1500)

IMPLEMENTATION PHASE  

• # of teams registering voluntarily to participate 2019: 25
  • 2020: (goal +80) 
• New metric for 2020: # kgs of avoided plastic by the implementation of their strategies (annual potential) 

FINAL PHASE 

• # of accomplished projects in the final 2019: 10 
  • 2020: (goal + 20)
• # of projects of finalists 2019: 6
• 2020: 12 finalists
• # of attendees to the final presentations 2019: 50
• 2020: 150 attendees

DISSEMINATION - for 2020 - with new app

• # of visits to the UCS open website page 
• # of downloads of projects reports 
• # of likes to social media posts about the program  

And as a whole organization, Unplastify presented this report of impact for 2019 : https://unplastify.squarespace.com/blog0/2020/1/15/nuestro-impacto-2019

Our goal for this year is to establish and streamline the UCS operations. From our experience from the pilot to scale it from 9 to 50 schools. For this we need two main assets : to partner with educational associations to form new educators in our subject and to develop the UnplastifyChallenge App.

We will use technology to scale up the challenge and bring it to more schools and communities.

We believe the app can then also work for other institutions (clubs, universities, government offices) that need to be unplastified. The same methodology of the kick off and challenge can be implemented in organizations to guide them through the process.

We tested the solution and found it has a great reception: people are becoming more interested in the subject and want to participate. Students become eager to think of solutions and implement them. We are harnessing their willingness to follow a cause and act, making them lead change.

We will be cooperating with other organizations that can fund or elevate our growth. We are presenting the proposal to large scale communication organizations that can help us make this solution grow faster and tackle the problem on a larger scale.

The main barrier now is financial. Developing an app has its cost and we need it to grow and we need it now. We started Unplastify only 2 years ago, with no investment but our time and effort and we’ve had many positive outcomes and are a sustainable company. Now we need to act fast, to grow, to scale up our solution and have more impact.

This is why we are applying to different funds and also in conversations with big players that can help us grow or partner up (Disney, Facebook). 

We also have a challenge in culture, since our focus is to change habits and this is cultural change. Working with local educators, from the alliance we are defining with educator’s networks is key to understand the different cultures in countries and know how to enter it.

We have on our side that, being from Argentina, we understand Latin American culture, but we are aware of the differences.

We are planning to overcome these barriers with all our team’s expertise and effort. We are presenting our project to companies and organizations that can become our strategic partners to grow faster or fund our scaling up.

We have done great work this past year and plan to grow in 2020.

https://www.unplastify.com/bitacora

I have described the program we ran this past 2019 in previous answers.

More information about the program is in the following link: 

https://www.unplastify.com/desafioescuelas

The team that produces the UCS is :

• Rocío González - Project leader - Part time staff
• Agustina Besada - Project leaders - Part time staff
• Ona Casal - Unplastify Education Challenges Coordinator - Part Time Staff
• Macarena Botta-  Community manager - Part Time Staff

The rest of Unplastify Team cooperates with the Unplastify Challenge for Schools.

We are passionate, experienced professionals that combine action oriented solutions with design capabilities. We come from management backgrounds and Ona is a young leader that communicates with the students in their same language.

Ten years ago I started re designing industrial discards from factories to create useful objects in order to reuse these materials and generate work opportunities.  My project became one of Argentina’s first B Certified Corporations.I learned about the amounts of materials discarded by the industry and put my design skills to generate something new.  As my enterprise grew I understood how I could generate not only an environmental impact, by reusing discard that would otherwise end up in a landfill but also creating opportunities for vulnerable communities of women aligning my passion for design to bring a solution for change, empowering women.

Agustina is a sustainability entrepreneur championing initiatives in support of a circular economy and triple bottom lines, with a focus on material waste valuation and recovery. Besada crossed the Atlantic Ocean in a 36-feet sailboat - twice - to research firsthand the reality of plastics in the ocean and study international solutions. Building on this voyage, she co-founded Unplastify with me. Agustina is also a 2018 National Geographic Explorer and an industrial designer by training. She has also received an M.S. in Sustainability Management from Columbia University’s Earth Institute and completed an executive program on entrepreneurship at Columbia Business School

Nat Geo - we have received an Early Career Grant to develop the pilot of the UCS

Parley-  we guide the Parley team for Argentina and we organize cleanups for the organization and measure their impact

This is our business model for the Unplastify Challenge for Schools App:

The UCS pilot was supported with a Nat Geo Explorer's Grant. In 2020, we will be working with : 

• Partnerships / Sponsorships: organizations / companies that want to sponsor private or public schools to participate - monthly fee sponsorship for x amount of schools
• Private schools that want to participate - monthly fee
• Grants for funding

With the UCS program funding we will be developing the app.

Unplastify is a social enterprise. This program is part of our whole strategy. The Unplastify App will serve the Unplastify Challenge for Schools and also other communities, such as clubs and other organizations that are also willing to have their own challenge. The app will permit having various challenges running at the same time. The most important challenge is the annual Unplastify for Schools Challenge, but we plan to run other challenges for other communities or organizations.

We are already sustainable. Unplastify has sustained its operations this year.

We receive grants that help us fund Challenges, such as the NatGeoExplorer Grant or the 11hr Racing Grant that we are using to run the UnplastifyChallenge for Clubs in Argentina.

We sell consultancy services and talks to companies : Green Eat, Supervielle Bank, Adidas, Banco Galicia. In our talks and workshops to raise awareness. In our consultancy service we evaluate operations and propose changes in the companies operations to avoid single use plastics. 

We represent Parley in Argentina and we organize cleanups and events to raise awareness and engage more people to take action against plastic ocean waste.

Here below is our P&L .

Unplastify has grown since we started with the project, organically. We believe solutions for unplastifying the world should grow now exponentially. We believe solutions should be systemic. Developing our Unplastify App we will be able to run Unplastifying Challenges simultaneously and rapidly scale our platform. The app will simplify communications and become an online. reservoir to engage users in unplastifying their communities. We are starting with schools, but the same model is easily translated to other organisations.

Our project, as a whole, was thought to impact Latin America. We are collaborating with different organisations that become platforms to expand our reach. We believe the IDB Group is an incredible platform to help us grow and scale, not only by receiving a grant to fund the development of the app but also by endorsing our work to apply to more grants and opportunities.

We believe we could partner with a massive media company to multiply the impact and use their media channels for amplifying the message.

Facebook: we have used their platforms (instagram, whatsapp) for the pilot program, and we are presenting the program to explore ways of collaboration. 

Google could also be a partner since it has many tools for online collaboration and education.

We are also looking for partnerships with education networks. We are in conversations with Teach for All to partner with their local educators in the countries we will be operating. Our talks,  workshops and new information we develop are interesting contents for these organizations, to teach at schools, so we would both benefit from this partnership.

Technology companies that could develop our app are also an important partner we are looking for. We have no technical expert, yet, in our team, so having a large company as a strategic partner for our business would be a great incorporation to have a reliable pathway in the development of the app.