Team:NYMU-Taipei/Partnership
Throw contact lens properly,
marine life live more happily.
隱形眼鏡不亂丟，保衛海洋大作戰
Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) guidelines proposed by the UN suggest 17 goals in total, concerning poverty, health care, climate change and so on issues. These plans were hoped to be fulfilled by 2030. Through social media, we can easily learn the information toward SDGs. The Internet, fully accessible to everyone, is also a great approach. Means to meet SDGs goals appears world widely on the Internet. As we type the keywords on the searching bar, numerous excellent examples will show up immediately. Nevertheless, after learning the concepts of SDGs, we wholeheartedly believe that we should spare no effort to dedicate our strength, too. Considering to take actions in person, we started to figure out our own solutions.
As we defined COVID-19 issues as our team project, we brainstormed for the way to meet the SDG guidelines. According to one of our applications, we practiced our ideas on contact lens, fortunately, which is also the same application target as iGEM NCKU’s. Consequently, we sought to have corporations on tackling contact lens issues together. How the contact lens been recycled and be reusable may be the major issue, which is our final solution.
Nowadays, as more and more individuals taking contact lens as their daily life necessity, the waste of this tiny, transparent stuff increases enormously. Nonetheless, parts of contact lens users have limited knowledge to throw contact lenses away properly. The main problem is mostly due to a lack of public conscious about how to deal with unwanted contact lens waste. A study from US had manifested that about 15-20% of contact lens users just throw the contact lenses to sinks or flush in to the toilet directly. On the other words, by this way, those contact lenses may degrade into microplastics, which severely causes water pollution. Lives can be threatened seriously in this case. The wrong disposal methods of contact lenses may have great influence on Earth, which may harm environment tremendously, especially for marine life.
We advocate and make significant contribution on appealing public awareness together. As college students, we started our solution from campus, approaching the idea to our classmates and inviting them to participant to our event. Collecting box of contact lens have been set at dormitories, classrooms and lounges, feasible to students, they can recycle their used contact lens to us for practical purpose. We also released the poster on both team pages, demonstrating the concept and propagating our actions. Successfully, in total over 600 contact lenses have been collected during this event.
One of the brilliant examples to greatly embodies this concept is to let individuals having their own personal experience, which may make deeper impression on themselves. We put emphasis on the problem by encouraging them to make their own art crafts, which participants can display their creativity by giving imagination with contact lens as the material, delivering another value of contact lens waste. Works on that day were totally amazing, which we hadn’t seen before, as the contact lens on such master pieces glittering under the sun shine.
We also launched a public education program in NCKU together. Students from NCKU were invited to join this exciting and interesting events. We aimed to raise their awareness toward recycling contact lens issues and hope they can gain access to knowledge regarding dealing with contact lens waste after the sessions. Sharing project ideas of both teams is also our top priority. All in all, it was a successful and meaningful collaboration.
I've Gotta PHD
I’ve gotta PHD is a collaboration project with over 10 iGEM teams, hosted mainly by iGEM CSMU and iGEM NCKU teams, focusing on 7 topics, including Science Communication, Basic Health Care, Mental Health, Break Discrimination and Racism, Research, Health care Orginization, Policies. Owing to our dedications on COVID-19 issue, it cannot denied that the significant impacts of COVID-19 over the world. Besides focusing on lab efforts, our team also put emphasis on humanities issues. We found that the Chinese over the world, especially in western area, have been discriminated critically. This terrible situation even worsed during COVID-19 period. Conquently, we would like to present the phenomenon through this platform to public concerning the topic of Break Discrimination and Racism.
Break Discrimination and Racism
Although having Asian faces, the Chinese are still human beings! – the phenomenon of discrimination against the Chinese during COVID-19 pandemic
Through ages, racial discrimination is consistently a significant issue. Even nowadays, more or less, violent debates between colors still exist as before in modern era. Until now, there is still no appropriate solution to this issue, no matter how fancy the world is. To make matters worse, due to the eruption of COVID-19, the problem has become more and more serious recently especially for Chinese people, which then results in social contradictions under the pandemic.
Currently, COVID-19 have already taken over million lives globally. In the beginning, the virus was found in Wuhan, China. It, however, has become a worldwide disaster in a short term. The president of the United States, Donald Trump even called SARS-CoV-2 a “Chinese virus”. In the meantime, particularly in Western areas, the Chinese become obvious targets. In other words, the status of being Chinese put them at a risk of discrimination, which then contributes to incredible impact on their lives.
According to Huma Right Watch (HWR), report on 17.04.2020 revealed that in just a few months, over 1000 cases of discrimination against the Chinese had been recorded. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also delivered a warning that, during the pandemic, crime rates concerning assault on Chinese people may elevate rapidly. Those who assaulted Chinese people claim that individuals with yellow skin are virus transmitters and that since Chinese could carry the virus, they should all leave the western country. Some even go as far as to say that the Chinese should not have the same rights to live a normal life. Under these situations, an unspoken rule that is followed in those precarious areas is, “Individuals, who look like Chinese, should be attacked.”
The discrimination not only manifests in physical aggression but also verbal form, which is also the more common way. Examples include swearing and demands to leave shops. Among the discriminated, women are even more often the subjects of this kind of treatment. Given these situations, Chinese are often unwelcomed in many places. Just because of their ethnic backgrounds, hotels and even Uber drivers would reject services to the Chinese. A radio program in Holland even aired the track, “Voorkomen is beter dan Chinezen”, appealing the public masses to keep distance to the Chinese. In addition, face masks itself is already a hot topic, but to make matters worse, this topic is also commonly used in discrimination among Chinese people. Chinese People with masks will be assumed as infected while the ones without mask will be assumed as being careless virus transmitters.
Being stigmatized as virus transmitters, the Chinese, due to fear of being attacked even further, advocate for change. They have established a team called “Asian Gambling SOS” which aims to make connections between communities closer and stronger. Moreover, Jason Chu, an American-Born Chinese, wrote a rap song declaring that the Chinese living in western areas are not terrorist. They are just people who live there and that those places may be their ‘only’ home. It is just so ignorant and ridiculous to discriminate directly against all Chinese people. In conclusion, although having Asia faces, the Chinese are still human beings.