The Plastic Project
Individual citizens and businesses desire a safe and pleasant environment for work and leisure. The plastics floating in the sea and washing onto shore in and around the Hawaiian Islands challenge the safety and pleasure of Hawaiian harbors and beaches. In addition, plastics and, in particular, micro-plastics may be endangering the safety of Hawaii’s marine-based ecological and food systems. Maui has already begun to take measures. The County of O’ahu and the City of Honolulu are also concerned about the viability of their tourism tied to the sea, the plastics in and around their harbor and waterways, and, the potential for plastics (and related chemicals) to enter the food chain.
Although the State of Hawaii has passed some cutting-edge legislation (which you must discover) on plastics, both the County of O’ahu and the City of Honolulu think it is necessary to take extra action, either directly or through support of non-governmental organizations working on the plastic issue. Furthermore, there are serious issues regarding the State of Hawaii’s implementation of its plastic legislation.
Your project is to come up with extra or new policies, SOPs, and/or programs that the County of O’ahu, the City of Honolulu or the State of Hawaii could implement to improve the plastic problem of the beaches and the harbor and waterways, and, guarantee the safety of the marine-based food-chain.
When choosing your policies, SOPs, and or programs, you need to realize that whatever you choose needs to be customer friendly and affordable.
Some guiding questions to start both the team portion and individual portion of the project:
Who is involved?
What are the issues?
Plastic Problem Plan Review: what are the policies, SOPs and/or programs which exist in other cities, counties, states, countries? (including goals and context)
What is the action that should be taken? What is the indicator for measuring the action? Who would be responsible for the action? What is necessary to complete the action? (i.e. money, stakeholder buy-in)
What do the stakeholders think? Who are the stakeholders? What are the trade-offs?
What type of investments are (or were for existing policies, SOPs and programs) necessary?
What or who is driving the desire to change the situation? Who is influencing the path of change? On what scale is change required?
