Have you ever walked into a store or passed by a corner and felt like something wasn’t quite right? After seeing the world going crazy because of China’s plastic ban and the invasion of our social media and news with images of oceans filled with plastic, there is a tireless group of consumers persisting about brands and shops to stop using plastic bags or plastic packaging. But still, things aren’t changing fast enough! Now you have the opportunity to practise silent activism with these activististickers and educate business owners and fellow shoppers to make a radical change! Find out ideas on where you could stick these in the most sneaky way! Oh, and 5 languages available – this is a World issue!!!!
INSTAGRAM COMPETITION & CHALLENGE UPDATE!!
Calling out to all fellow or future activists! Today we are launching #ourgoodactivistchallenge and for the next 30 days, you can take part in this incredible mission to help clean up the planet. On your next walk to school, to work, or to the grocery store, make sure you pick up any litter you find along the way, and you’ll stand a chance to win two #watchyourwaste collections of @activistickers YAY!
HOW TO PARTICIPATE #ourgoodactivistchallenge
- Â Pick-up litter on the beach, at the park or anywhere in the world.
- Take a picture of at least three pieces of litter
- Upload it on your Instagram feed and/or story and tag @activistickers and @ourgoodbrands (and you can even tag another activist who inspires you)
- Use the hashtag #ourgoodactivistchallenge
- Feel free to enter as many photos as you like (each with at least three pieces of rubbish, #ourgoodactivistchallenge, @activistickers, @ourgoodbrands), every valid photo counts as one entry
ABOUT THE CHALLENGE
- Dates: starting 15th of October / ending 15th of November 2018
- Prize: both collections of #watchyourwaste stickers!
- The winner will be announced on the 15th of November and the collections of #activistickers will be sent to any place in the world.
GOOD LUCK & PICK-UP!
And for the pro’s – upload the pic on Openlittermap a citizen science litter-mapping game to clean the planet & earn Littercoins. It’s easy, fun and rewarding: mine cryptocurrency every time you process litter data. This technology empowers anyone to share litter information by using the platform, which can also be downloaded for free (as we all know how expensive plastic pollution researches can be!).
NOW!! We interview these incredible sisters who combined their skills to launch collections of activistickers. They have brought us a new way of practising activism – in silence, made easy, fun and to make us become more effective in spreading the message. Their greatest success? Getting people to become more aware of our plastic pollution. Soon? Launching a new collection about a totally different topic!! Hope this inspires you with a new way of shaking change and to tell the world to #WatchYourWaste!
Can you explain a bit about your background?
Activistickers is a project we started in November 2017. We are two sisters and, along with our support system, we create and sell stickers about topics we feel people need to hear more about. At the moment we’ve released two sticker collections all about reducing plastic waste, as this was the first issue we wanted to tackle. But we are currently working on a collection on reducing meat intake.
What was the tipping point for you to start Activistickers?
I, the activist of the two of us, had attended a talk on zero waste at the sustainability group of my university, and it really opened my eyes to the amount of plastic we use in our daily lives. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it. So after a week or two of noticing all the ways in which I was personally harming the environment, I messaged my sister, the artist, and told her I wanted to do something about it. I asked her about creating posters or signs, and she came up with the idea of making cute but informative stickers. I loved it, so she got started right away!
What is your mission?
Essentially, we just want to create awareness, because before I went to that talk, we also had no idea this was going on. Most people don’t think about where your waste goes when you throw it ‘away’. And we really believe that if people knew what was happening, they would want to help change it. We are just doing for them what that talk did for me, and then hopefully, they’ll decide to take action too. The zero waste movement is catching on (and so is the vegan movement), but we’re targeting all the people that have no idea about why it’s happening.
How would you like people to use them?
We aim for people to stick them up in supermarkets or stores, where there are lots of goods packaged in plastic (such as water, meat, fruits, etc). We think it’s better to target products that have easy-to-switch-to reusable alternatives, instead of products that are harder to get sustainably. An example is getting people to stop buying bottles of water, and instead, drinking tap water. Other places they can be stuck is in student residences where there is a lot of waste, or in workplaces by the shared kitchen facilities, to target specific groups of people.
One place we always challenge each other to stick them on is the plastic bag dispenser in the fruit and veg aisle of the grocery store. We have one sticker specifically about plastic bags that works perfectly in there, but there are always a lot of people in that section of the store, so it’s not easy to be sneaky about it!
What does your creation process look like?
First, we sit down together and Google. We look through all the facts we’d read or seen in documentaries and we fact check them all to make sure it’s all accurate. Once we have a list of facts we’re happy with, my sister, the artist, creates the drawings for the stickers on her tablet. We have a group chat together with our ‘moral support’, as we call them, where my sister will send a billion photos a day of the designs so we can say, ‘can you just fix that?’ or ‘can we change this?’ or ‘is it too late to move that there?’.
When we’re finally happy with the look, she arranges them on A4 sized paper in the most efficient way, where we lose the least paper when printing, and sends them to me and our moral support.
Our collections come in different languages because between the four of us we speak 5 languages, and the other languages are translated by volunteer followers that want to help the cause. So once the English set is done, my sister will make the other language sets.
We print the stickers in our town at a local print shop, and when we get an order, I invite my moral support over to my place and we sit and cut all the stickers out before we mail them out.
What are the materials used for the stickers?
Our stickers are printed on ‘label paper’ as the print store calls it, so it’s made mainly of paper, and the backing of it is made of plastic. It’s unfortunate that there is plastic in our stickers, but our theory is that if one sticker only stops one person from buying one plastic bottle one time, it’s already less plastic that ends up in the waste bin.
What would you say is the most prominent activist community in the world?
We get a lot of orders from all over the world, and our followers also come from everywhere. I have noticed that a lot of the online support we get is from the UK and Australia, however, many of our orders are shipped to the US.
What would mean “success” for activistickers?
To be honest, we started activistickers because I wanted to stick them in my town and I thought I’d send them to some friends to get some up in other countries, but we never expected it to grow this much. Success comes from every person that learns something from our stickers or our page. Everyone whose eyes are opened a little to the ways in which we’re hurting our planet, and the ways in which they can help heal it. We love hearing reactions to our stickers’ facts like ‘wow, I had no idea about this, thanks for letting us know!’ We’re just trying to spread awareness after all.
Success comes from every person that learns something from our stickers or our page. Everyone whose eyes are opened a little to the ways in which we're hurting our planet, and the ways in which they can help heal it. @activistickers… Click To Tweet
Where can we find you?
You can find us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter as @activistickers as well as our website and, of course, you can find us all over the world in the aisles of supermarkets.
Have you ever used these stickers before? Would you like to use them? Comment below and share your ideas with us!
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