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Do you know how much money your company loses to landfill?

$250 million dollars’ worth of packaging plastic was lost to landfill in 2019

We want to return some of that money to your bottom line

Recover recycling is excited to invite you, Phamatab to be the founding partner of its innovative blister pack recycling program.

By participating you will reduce your company’s packaging costs, deliver on corporate and social responsibility, improve your reputation and be part of a community approach to tackling climate change.

About the Recover Recycling program

Recover recycling is a new enterprise created to bring together a community of corporate partners and participants to deliver a comprehensive recycling program to the community.

Recover Recycling is an enterprise dedicated to helping organisations take responsibility for their entire supply chain life cycle.

Key features of the program

Community engagement is key to the success of the program. Recover Recycling will ask consumers through a comprehensive marketing and social media campaign to collect and send back their blister packs.

On launching we would like to offer two return options.

  1.  Return blister packs back to pharmacy.
  2.  Scan the QR code on the packaging to download a reply-paid post label.

We will achieve this by harnessing the existing fear and anger for the planet and directing it to positive action.

Our brand promise is to hold the big guys accountable. It’s not just a tagline. It’s a promise that we will bring organisations together to make change, as well as we check that what is done is going to make a difference.

Our brand promise offers a level of trust and transparency for our consumers.

Recover Recycling will position ourselves as a middleman, who works to bring together passionate advocates, consumers, and organisations to create change at scale.

We will manage the corporate partnerships, as well as the consumer campaigns, logistics and infrastructure to deliver the program.

Benefits to you

RR would be proud to have Phamatab as our partner. Together we will deliver great benefits to the planet as well as to your bottom line.

In preparation for Australia to move towards a sustainable packaging network, the Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO) has set the following National Packaging Targets for 2025:

– 100% reusable, recyclable, or compostable packaging

– 70% of plastic packaging being recycled or composted

– 50% of average recycled content included in packaging

– The phase out of problematic and unnecessary single-use plastics packaging

Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO)

These targets demonstrate industry needs to work towards these changes.  By leading the initiative and launching our partnership now, you will be on track for compliance.

The investment in plastic recycling facilities in Victoria, could uniquely position our partnership and program to be able to offer this service with a margin to other organisations in the future.

In their most recent report, Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO)  estimated that the lost economic value of plastic that ended up in landfill could have been worth $250 million dollars if it had been recycled (APCO 2021).

We want to return some of those costs, to your bottom line. Our modelling shows that if we meet the 70% recycling target then we can reduce the costs of your blister packs by 50%.

Adding this partnership to Phamatab’s corporate social responsibility initiates, will raise your reputation value, and improve your bottom line by not only recovering resources, but by managing risk (Ewing 2015).

Working together

To make the program successful, we will work together to overcome risks such as:

Reducing our logistics carbon footprint – by partnering with carbon offset programs.

Making the program as accessible and inclusive as possible, which may include captioning in multiple languages, and a pickup option for the collection of blister packs.

Making sure all members of our partnership’s entire supply chain is to our agreed ethical standards – by developing a team which will support our partners to investigate their entire supply chains.

We are asking you enter into a partnership with Recover Recycling to deliver on your corporate social responsibility to own the complete lifecycle of your products

We are asking for funding to cover implementation capital and consumer campaign costs, of what will ultimately be, a self-funding recycling service for blister packs.

Let’s start

You will have received the pitch proposal document which covers the executive summary, market imperative and assessment in detail.

As a first step in our partnership, we have prepared a Heads of Agreement for your consideration.

We are so excited to begin this partnership and help our planet, together.

References

APCO 2021, Australian packaging consumption and recycling data 2018–19, Australian Packaging Covenant Organisation (APCO), retrieved from <https://documents.packagingcovenant.org.au/public-documents/Australian%20Packaging%20Consumption%20And%20Recycling%20Data%202018-19&gt;.

Ewing, AP 2015, ‘Corporate Responsibility’, in Reputation Management: The Key to Successful Public Relations and Corporate Communication, Taylor & Francis Group, London, UNITED KINGDOM, retrieved August 5, 2021, from <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/deakin/detail.action?docID=1975236&gt;.

All Logos designed and created by Gabi Kendall

Blister pack footage shot by Gabi Kendall

Creative Common Video & Audio Components as follows:

Tracking over trash on beach by Videvo, downloaded from Videvo

Drone footage of an Industrial plants by Kelly Lacy, downloaded from Pexels

Testing The Durability Of A One Dollar Paper Bill by cottonbro, downloaded from Pexels

As we go by Thomas Gresen downloaded from hypeddit

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Gamification, let’s start at the beginning

IMG_6646
Image taken by author

Once you start to pay attention to gamification, you will probably begin to notice that it is everywhere! Personally, I didn’t realise how much gamification I have been exposed to and participated with until I really started to pay attention.

Here’s a short podcast I made shortly after discovering gamification.

Hold on, what is gamification?

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Gamification? – Image taken by author

Gamification is the concept of integrating gaming mechanics and game dynamics into non-gaming activities. It can be used to motivate and provide encouragement. (Hamari, J, Koivisto J, 2015,)

What do you mean by gaming mechanics and game dynamics?

Gaming mechanics

  • Point Systems – These are used to cumulatively reward players and act as an instant positive reinforcement.
  • Challenges, trophies, badges/medals and accomplishments – a visible reward for reaching new levels or completing a goal.
  • Levels- To show players have completed a goal or task.
  • Virtual Goods- incentivise the player to keep working or being active within the game by allowing ‘purchasing’ of the virtual goods (often with the points a player has collected)
  • Classification Table, ranking score table or leader boards are used to display the position of the player within the game.

Gaming Dynamics

  • Rewards – presented after an action or activity completed to positively reinforce the player and encourage a repetition of the action.
  • Status – acts as recognition of participation, such as levelling up.
  • Accomplishment/Fulfilment -Encourages players to continue working on a task as a sense of accomplishment is achieved when the goal is completed.
  • Self-expression – Players need the ability to express themselves within games. for example, customisable avatars which can set players apart and allow people to display their independence.
  • Competition can give some players a sense of gratification by comparing their performance with other players.

(Da Rocha Seixas, L, Sandro Gomes, A, De Melo Filho, IJ, 2015)

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Gamification Elements – Image taken by author

Okay now we understand what Gamification is, how is it used?

Due to gamification being so motivating it has been adopted into so many industries!

Let’s’ have a look at some examples…

You can find many gamification applications in the health industry – such as apps which support people to quit smoking such as MyQuit Buddy or support them with their fitness goals, like MyFitnessPal.

Gamification in Business, surely not?!

Remember the McDonald’s monopoly game? An analogue version of gamification.

How about the Coles – little shop promotions (Although I will keep my opinions on that for another future blog, or feel free to have a look at the quick video I posted on twitter whilst I was in the heat of the moment)

Woolworths discovery garden promotion, Hungry Jacks app, Boost Juice.

Gamification is not only used in business as promotional material, it is also harnessed within organisations.

There’s many applications available to support or engage employees, such as iActionable , Team Treehouse, Battle Jungle, Centrical.

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Gamification is found in many industries – Image taken by author

Now that your paying attention to gamification, you may be realising, like me that you have actually participated in gamification in the education sector. It wasn’t until I was really paying attention that I realised I had been motivated with gamification by a math tutor I had years ago in high school. I was rewarded for completing the questions by playing mini games on the computer. My sister had Mathletics during her education

These days there’s even gamification programs such as – Classcraft, Rezzly, ClassDojo and Gradecraft and personal education apps such as Duolingo which assist you learning a new language!

Once you start looking into it there are heaps of personal apps to support your own journey for motivation, whether that’s beginning and supporting habits such as Habitica, or concentration supporting applications such as Forest or Flora.

Then there’s some apps that has got me thinking, What came first, the game or the gamification?

Such as Pokémon Go. Was this designed as a game, or an app to encourage people to get outside into their local environments?

I’d love to hear about your experience with gamification in the comment section down below.

Are you like me, and have participated with gamification without even realising?

Or better yet do you utilise and benefit from some gamified applications or programs?

I know I am looking forward to exploring our gamified world more!

References

Da Rocha Seixas, L, Sandro Gomes, A, De Melo Filho, IJ, 2015, ‘Effectiveness of gamification in the engagement of students’, Computers in Human Behaviour, vol. 58, pp.48-63 doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.11.021

Hamari, J, Koivisto J, 2015, ‘Why do people use gamification services?’, International Journal of Information Management, vol. 35 no. 4, pp. 418-431, doi: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2015.04.006

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Gamification: What do these gaming elements have over us?

So, having learned that gamification is the concept of adding gaming elements into non-gaming contexts, to harness the motivation capability that games have and utilise them into the non-gaming context. (Hamari J, Koivisto J, 2015)

The question to explore is: why is gamification able to be motivating? What do these gaming elements have over us?

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Gamification Motivates – Image taken by author.

A few major theories seek to explain how Gamification can be so motivating.

Just as everyone learns differently, everyone is motivated differently. Many papers and theorists have tried to breakdown all the components based on different psychological models (Deterding, S 2015). However, as humans all have different motivations, this range of theories compete to explain how gamification can be so motivating,

As this is only a short blog post, and a long rabbit hole to get stuck in, let’s just touch on a few.

Many papers use Flow Theory to describe individuals’ experiences when playing games. Flow theory describes the ‘rewarding, subjective, emotional state of optimal pleasure that arises when an individual is absorbed in either work or leisure activities that are perceived as valuable’ (Boyle et al. 2012). Flow theory indicates that in order to maintain engagement there should be a balance between individual skills and the challenges within an activity. As well as be naturally gratifying, immersive, require a high degree of attentiveness, give a sense of autonomy, have clear goals and provide feedback to the user. (Boyle et al. 2012)

Yee’s (2006) research attempted to identify some core tools to assess the motivational components of games. His paper concluded with three core components.

An Achievement Component which consists of elements of advancement, mechanics and competition. A Social Component- socialising, building relationships and teamwork. And an Immersion Component which is characterised by elements of discovery, role playing, and customisation. Yee concluded that the player motivations do not subdue each other (Yee, N, 2006).

The last theory I’d like to review is Self- Determination Theory, which Ryan, Rigby and Przybylski (2010) built on to study players reasons for playing games. Self- Determination Theory or SDT implies that we are motivated to participate in activities which satisfy three innate psychological needs – The sense of autonomy, competence and ability to relate to others.

  • Autonomy describes the sense of acting within ones will towards your own goals, needs values and identity
  • Competence is fulfilled with the experience of one’s growing ability to achieve a task or challenge
  • Relatedness is the sense of connection with others.

The theory suggests that when these needs are met, we are independently motivated (Deci, EL, Ryan, RM, 2012).

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When Gaming Elements and Non Gaming Elements Combine – Image taken by author.

When comparing all of these different theories to the multiple common gaming elements, we can begin to understand why each element holds and contributes different motivation qualities to the gamification design.

(Check out my previous blog post here, where I discuss some of the common gaming elements)

This further explains why successful gamification design uses combinations of many gaming elements in order to create a motivating and engaging design.

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Gaming Elements – Image taken by author.

I found that researching why gaming elements can be so motivating absolutely fascinating. There are a lot of theories and it is a highly complex area of psychological study. To explain how particular gaming elements can satisfy one of the most well supported theories that I’ve discovered, Self Determination Theory, I’ve created a short video.

In the video I review an application called Habitica against this theory. I explain how the app uses gaming elements which fulfil the three needs included in Self Determination theory.

Lots of these theories that I learned about, attempt to generalise the motivating elements in gamification, which evades the fact that every human is different and will (or even will not) be motivated and engaged by different combinations of elements included in gamification.

References

Boyle, EA, Connolly, TM, Hainey, T, Boyle, JM, 2012, ‘Engagement in digital entertainment games: A systematic review’, Computers in Human Behaviour, vol. 28, no. 3, pp.771-780, doi:10.1016/j.chb.2011.11.020

Da Rocha Seixas, L, Sandro Gomes, A, De Melo Filho, IJ, 2015, ‘Effectiveness of gamification in the engagement of students’, Computers in Human Behaviour, vol. 58, pp.48-63 doi:10.1016/j.chb.2015.11.021

Deci, EL, Ryan, RM, 2012, ‘Motivation, Personality and Development Within Embedded Social Contexts: An Overview of Self-Determination Theory’ The Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195399820.013.0006

Hamari, J, Koivisto J, 2015, ‘Why do people use gamification services?’, International Journal of Information Management, vol. 35 no. 4, pp. 418-431, doi: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2015.04.006

Deterding, S 2015, ‘The Lens of Intrinsic Skill Atoms: A Method for Gameful Design’ Human- Computer Interaction, vol. 30 no. ¾, pp. 294-335, doi: 10.1080/07370024.2014.993471

Yee, N, 2006, ‘Motivations for Play in Online Games’ , CyberPsychology & Behaviour, vol. 9, no. 6, pp772-775, doi:10.1089/cpb.2006.9.772

Video

8bit game (https://theartistunion.com/tracks/cd7de4) by Alex Nekita CC by 3.0

Deci, EL, Ryan, RM, 2012, ‘Motivation, Personality and Development Within Embedded Social Contexts: An Overview of Self-Determination Theory’ The Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195399820.013.0006

Hamari, J, Koivisto J, 2015, ‘Why do people use gamification services?’, International Journal of Information Management, vol. 35 no. 4, pp. 418-431, doi: 10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2015.04.006 Deterding, S 2015, ‘The Lens of Intrinsic Skill Atoms: A Method for Gameful Design’ Human- Computer Interaction, vol. 30 no. ¾, pp. 294-335, doi: 10.1080/07370024.2014.993471

All images included taken by the author

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A Digital Undivide

Many digital divides have been created due to digital media, during this video I unpack what I see as a positive impact of Digital Media, and how it has contributed to shrinking the divide of distance – a digital undivide.

After creating my last video on the digital divides, I wanted to explore this topic more. I did lots of research but wasn’t completely decided on which direction I wanted to go in. After attending my friend’s funeral and witnessing the incredible collaboration between friends far and wide to contribute to this day, it became clear to me that this positive impact of Digital Media and how the divide of distance has shrunk was the perfect argument for me to unpack in my next video.

Out of respect, I did not want to use footage from the funeral in my video and decided I would just discuss it on screen.

When thinking about the type of overlays I could use with this topic I had one idea come to mind immediately. I planned to use some overlay of a video call. I discovered that I could screen capture a real video call without any copyright infringement. At first was disappointed with the quality of the video call but I decided that’s okay as that is just the reality of sending video and audio through a call!

I actually finished my video and then decided to completely reshoot and re-edit the whole thing. The original was fine but there were some things I believed I could improve upon. In the first video I noticed a sound made from my partners chair on the other side of the room, as well as some marks on the wall behind me and I was not happy with the colour scheme in the footage. I decided to reshoot at my mother’s house when everybody was out for the day. I took the art I had in the background of my first video along with me for continuity, sat next to a window for natural light, and reshot the whole thing. I chose an area that was well lit, not busy and had plain colours. I decided that the plain colours meant that my video was not too busy, and I was able to complement them with my own appearance, but still stand out with my body language and voice tonality.

  • Reshooting - Exploring different locations and colour schemes.
Reshooting – Exploring different locations and colour schemes.

When researching my topic, I discovered that articles are rather negatively focused about digital media and divides, so I decided to search in a different direction and focus more on the relationships that are able to be maintained though digital media. I then found Nancy Baym’s book, Personal Connections in the Digital Age which was full of amazing concepts that highlighted how digital media supports relationships despite distance.

At first, I looked at using the same music as my last video for continuity however decided that it sounded too comical and looked for similar jazz music instead.

When shooting I was sure to regularly change the tone and speed of my voice so that I could maintain audience engagement. I decided to just use my phone audio as I was positioning the camera quite close to me. However, after feedback from my last video, I decided to do more editing and mixing of the audio in the post production stage using audio software.

I found it difficult to remember an almost 8-minute script off by heart, I worked around this by writing and highlighting dot points that would prompt me of my script and sticking them close to the camera. I found myself often mispronouncing words and having to start that section again. When I noticed I was continually having this problem, I edited my script and swapped in another word instead. I left some mistakes and speech gaps in my final video as I feel this realistic feel makes it authentic, nobody is perfect, and although I tried my best, I’m only human.

When reshooting I had to do lots of sections over again when I noticed the dog next door barking, or a plane flying over. I decided as I was reshooting anyway, I may as well try for it to be as perfect as possible. This ended up meaning I shot 45 minutes of footage! Lots of critical editing needed. Due to already having completed a video and knowing when I would be adding overlay footage, imagery or text, I was able to be aware of when I could strategically begin shooting or look at my script prompts, which was extremely helpful.

Digital media can be used to bridge so many existing divides that I knew I could never cover this topic comprehensively in just one short video. I resolved this issue by turning this video into a series, and introducing the next video coming at the end of this one. This meant I was able to acknowledge that there is much more to cover, at the same time as setting myself a new goal and task for the future.

References

Landers, CS 2017, The Digital Divide: Issues, Recommendations and Research, Internet Theory, Technology and Applications, Nova Science Publishers, Inc, Hauppauge, New York, viewed 17 September 2019, eBook Collection (EBSCOhost)

Baym, N K 2010. Personal Connections in the Digital Age, Digital media and Society series, Polity Press, viewed 22 September 2019, eBook Collection (EBSCOhost)

Image

Photo by Brett Zeck on (free use via Unsplash)

Music from https://filmmusic.io:

Bossa Antigua by Kevin Macleod (CC by 4.0)

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ALM102 Making Video Assessment 2

Exploring the Digital Divides – An Interview with my Grandparents

Digital divides is such a broad topic, and as a digital native, one of the divides that is hard for me to relate to is between those that know how to use technology and those that do not. I decided to interview my grandparents about their relationships with technology to look into and discuss this divide further.

As we discuss within the video, my relationship with my grandparents often includes trying to bridge the gap in the digital divide they experience. Within our interview we covered many topics, ranging from their first experiences with a party line telephone that connected all the neighbouring farms to each other, and then to the town, but ended up functioning more of a gossip line for the isolated farmer’s wives (Which was a serious problem when there was a fire!) all the way to their relationship with current technology and how they have learnt to use it. However though editing, I decided to take it down to a few important topics I felt related to my research, and which really help to explain their personal experience of this digital divide, which included the struggles they face using technology, whether technology has made a positive impact to their lives, as well as the kind of devices they use and their concerns with technology.

“Technology” by Sephko

I really thought about the kind of overlay I wanted to include in my video, and how I wanted the video to flow. I decided that as it was a personal interview, I wanted to stick with footage of us rather than including outside images. I had some great footage of me actually helping my Apa Jim to learn a new app we had downloaded. Unfortunately, the lighting and quality of the footage is not very impressive, but I decided the content was more important in this instance and just did my best to fix it up within the software. I found this really useful to use between cut scenes of the interview. I felt that jazz music would be an appropriate style to fit interviewing my grandparents and found a perfect creative commons licensed track though SoundCloud. However, I wanted our conversation to be the main focus point of the video so decided to use the music as the intro and outro of the video- to not distract from the content.

Some of the challenges I faced was due to my family being big talkers. The few questions I asked ended up leaving me with 12-minute-long footage, and so much of it was great content! This meant I really had to assess which sections were most relevant to the research I had been doing about digital divides and then do some serious editing! I found using overlay backgrounds with my questions on them to be really helpful for not only reducing the time of the overall video, but I decided it was nice to mix up the interview format. I certainly learned you do not need many questions to fill a short video and will in future will decide on only a couple of concise questions.

Through this process, I gained great insight into what creates digital divides and how this can affect people every day, especially people who are not digital natives.

These include overwhelm because: technology changes too quickly for older adults to keep up with the changes; non-intuitive language within apps – Apa Jim explained that app language is different to how we actually speak, making it harder to use; they find technology is difficult to learn; its difficult for them to find ‘explanations’ and ‘how to’ guides; online security is very concerning; and they have concerns even about security via the telephone – giving the example of the ‘scamline’.

I’m sure next time I need to explain or teach a piece of technology, I’ll have more patience and understanding, and be glad that I am not facing such overwhelm!  

“Technology” by Sephko is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (https://www.behance.net/gallery/15399481/Technology)

The Digital Divide: Issues Recommendations and Research  by Craig S Landers (https://novapublishers.com/shop/the-digital-divide-issues-recommendations-and-research/) Accessed through (http://ezproxy.deakin.edu.au/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1530459&authtype=sso&custid=deakin&site=eds-live&scope=site)

Jingle Jazz (https://soundcloud.com/theunarmedcrusader/jingle-jazz-smooth-jazz-hi-rachel )by TheUnarmedCrusader (CC by 3.0)

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ALM102 Making Video Assessment Task 1

I wanted my video to feel authentic, so I attempted to record a video that I did not need to edit. It certainly did not take one take but the video I ended up choosing was shot all in one go. It is not perfect snd theres a few moments where I say ‘erm’ or ‘umm’ or you can see me thinking of my next point, but I believe this adds to the authenticity of the video. If the video was perfect and it appeared I was performing a prewritten and memorised script I think this would convey to the audience that it was more of a performance than an authentic about me video. 

Within my video I wanted the content to focus on  why I was enrolled in this Communications course at Deakin. I feel that this gives the audience a bit more background for the video and a deeper insight. I then chose to speak about topics that I genuinely love and can talk for hours about, this means I did not have to put on a performance. I love plants so much that I knew my eyes would light up as I spoke about them and my struggles of finding space in my apartment for them, I knew this would contribute to my audience feeling the authenticity of the video.

To get the composition right for my video, I begun by I taking a few photos of myself with my background from the tripod. I discovered later that the video setting actually zooms in on the subject more so the set up was not right. I decided to take short video takes instead to get the composition right.

I had planned to shoot my video during the day when there would be natural light from the window I was sitting next to and the skylight in my apartment. I set up my space in the morning and had everything set up for when I returned for work to shoot.

 However on the afternoon of shooting the weather changed and it became extremely overcast. I noticed that between each take of the video, the lighting changed due to the natural light changing through the skylight. It was too dark if I closed the skylight so I decided to continue adjusting the settings on my lights between each take, hoping that I got the lighting right. Some of them tuned out too bright and overexposed and others with too many shadows. 

In my practise takes I was looking at whether I would need to record audio separately. I was able to capture a clear and audible sound using my phone, meaning I did not have to employ another recording technique. However I did realise in the middle of one of my takes that the heater above me turned on. That was noisy! I promptly turned it off and begun another take. 

I reflect in my video that I learned that talking to a camera on my own was much more challenging than other performances I have participated in. I certainly did not expect to feel as awkward and silly as I did. I stumbled on my words a lot in my first takes and often found my mind go blank. This just meant another take, which was helpful as the more I did the less uncomfortable I became and the more I managed to get through the whole two minutes without stumbling. 

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