The Plastic Game: ideas
• Goal: decrease the consumption of plastic bottles

• Principle of the game: Each bottle, when produced, would be given a token, which would follow the way the bottle make from the production to the consumption, ending in the waste disposal. Once bought by a consumer, a system would automatically register this number in a database, as well as the name of the consumer. Once a year, the Plastic Game would take place (one per country). It would globally happen like this. Among all plastic bottles buyers, 20 people would be chosen randomly. The chance to get chosen would depend on the number of plastic bottles bought during the year: the more a person has bought some, the more chance he/she would get to be chosen. These 20 people would have to defend themselves from the others in order to not loose. The last one remaining would be the loser, and would consequently have to pay a huge tax to compensate the pollution created by the production of plastic bottles. This money would be invested in research to decease pollution and waste. During the game, the candidates would face several tasks, one by stage. Each time, candidates would denote from the others in good terms, which would allow them to leave the game. The trial would be different at each step. Ideas of tasks:
- Think about why they have bought plastic bottles and what other things they could have bought instead. Propose a global solution about how people could reduce their plastic waste. The most creative and realizable ideas would be rewarded.
- Think about an innovative way to use plastic waste from plastic bottles so that the waste would decrease
- Make the most impressive statue/object of art/thing with plastic bottles only. The most original idea would win
- …
Punishment is the practice whereby an aversive incentive is qualified upon the manifestation of a certain response . Academics have found that punishment is an effective approach in order to reduce and supress behavioural problems amongst populations . Through their convenience plastic bottles have become embedded into the mankind’s consumerist lifestyle, here we propose a radical, annual event set out to solely punish those who purchase and drink from these environmentally caustic containers. We present to you the annual Plastic Games. As punishment for endorsing the existence of the plastic bottle, one individual representing each country will face an arduous challenge aimed to publically degrade and instil fear into bottle consumers.
How it works
When an individual is guilty of purchasing a beverage which comes packaged in a plastic bottle, the scanning of the barcode will automatically require the seller to ask the individual for photo identification. The purchaser’s details will be entered in a lottery system; each single purchase of a bottle will amass to one entry under your name, therefore the more you buy the greater the number of times you are entered.
On the 31st of December, each country will call a mandatory emergency broadcast, the lottery results will be revealed. The name of a tribute representing a plastic bottle consumer from the past year will randomly be elected from the pool of identities; this ill-fated advocate of the plastic bottle will be mandatorily expelled to the Plastic Games arena, the plastic contaminated and tainted Midway Atoll.
Midway Atoll, part of the Hawaiian island chain is the poisoned habitat to millions of seabirds . This island is the oceans dumping ground of plastic waste due to its locality to the Pacific Garbage Patch . Scattered amongst the island are the plastic burdened carcasses of seabirds who have mistaken varying forms of plastic including bottles and their caps as nourishment, for the deadly items to cause stomach and intestinal blockages .
Dumped on the island all the offered tributes will be forced to compete against each other in the collection of as much plastic waste as possible, by whatever means necessary. Partakers will be forced to pick through decomposing bodies of the birds deprived of a life and the hazardous plastic dumpsites, effectively cleaning up the 5 tons of plastic garbage humans forcibly impose upon this island of natural beauty each year. Whoever at the end of 48 hours has amassed the least amount of plastic through their clean-up efforts will be forced to endure a full year of isolation, banished on the island.