Trash-sorting game a big winner
The garbage-sorting board game cards are bilingual.
Students play the garbage-sorting game in the competition.
A garbage-sorting board game contest was held in Hongkou District over the weekend with 160 people having their knowledge of waste classification challenged in a fun way.
The game was developed by Shanghai Huimin Middle School and social organization YOUNGS in June last year to help players learn about garbage sorting.
The game draws inspiration from classic board games such as Monopoly and Ludo. Each player has to choose a different character such as "Xiaopang” — “Little Fatty” and "Community Auntie" who have different "skills," and the first player to drop all their waste cards into the correct bins is the winner. If the waste goes in the wrong bin, the player has to pick up more cards.
Students play the garbage sorting game.
There are 135 different trash cards. Some such as a take-away box with unfinished soup are deliberately confusing and need to be separately disposed of.
The designers visited many venues to collect samples and make the game more realistic, said Zhao Xiyang, a teacher at Huimin Middle School.
Nearly 1,000 people applied to take park in the competition online and 160 made it to the final round. The prize was a conducted tour of Shanghai's treatment facilities for household garbage.
"I really enjoyed playing," said Cui Jiabei, a parent. "I lost to some children because of some confusing items like mosquito-repellent incense, photographic film and an unfinished can of cola. Children seem to know the right thing to do straight away," she said.
The competition held at the Hongkou campus of Shanghai International Studies University attracted people of all ages.
"The game is very popular," said Wu Kaiming, an official with the Youth League Shanghai. "It received a good response when it was played at the city's Love Summer Camp."
Information about categories of trash are available on several platforms such as the city government's public WeChat accounts (shanghaifabu) and about 27 million searches have been made since January when it was launched.
