Plastic stories: a night market's single-use economy
How much single-use plastic passes through one night market in an evening, where does it come from, and what would vendors and customers accept in its place?
Sample project. Illustrative content written to show how work is documented; not a real student, team or result.
Background
Night markets are a defining part of Taiwanese urban life and a concentrated source of single-use plastic: bags, cups, straws, skewers, containers. Policy has targeted some items, but the economics and the habits of a market are more complicated than a ban.
Research question
How much single-use plastic passes through one night market in an evening, where does it come from, and what would vendors and customers accept in its place?
Method
- A waste audit: sampling bins at fixed intervals on three evenings, sorting and weighing by item type.
- Vendor interviews: supply sources, costs, and attitudes toward alternatives.
- A materials review: what compostable or reusable alternatives exist, what they cost, and whether local waste systems can actually process them.
- A visual essay documenting the market's material flows.
Findings
Not applicable for a sample project. A real project would report the audit figures with their sampling limits and summarize what vendors said.
Why it is interdisciplinary
The project draws on environmental science for the audit, social research for the interviews, materials science for the alternatives and design for the communication. No single discipline could answer the question alone.
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