The most remarkable problem is reaching people to use cloth bags, reusable meal boxes and their own bottles by spreading the idea of sustainability in both Bilkent and other universities, which Bilkent nears. Even though people have specific knowledge about the harmful effects of plastic bottle usage, they haven't taken any action to prevent its adverse impacts on earth. One of the best ways to organize people is to create a poster that includes information about project competition-related with rewards, photos, and texts showing the damage of plastic bottles to the environment and post it on the website. In addition, students can upload new ideas and their comments about the project on web site via Jotform. With that interaction, website popularity would increase, and people share in other effective social platforms such as Twitter and Instagram.

Example of Other Institution

The Campus Race to Zero Waste is an eco-friendly competition for universities recycling programs to promote waste reduction activities to their campus. In 8 weeks, each spring, universities across the United States and Canada report the amount of recycling and trash collected each week and rank in different categories based on who recycles the most. On the other hand, universities have the best recycling rate as a percentage of total waste, and universities generate the least amount of combined trash and recycling. With each week’s updated ranking related to data. In addition, participating universities follow their performance against other universities. They use results to make the competition more competitive on their campus to reduce and recycle more (Recyclemania).

Theoretical Appliance of the Project

This project’s objective is to decrease the usage of plastic materials on campus. Firstly, it aims to reduce it by influencing people on Bilkent University campus, including college students, by informing them of the disadvantages and dangers of using excessive plastic. Even though most people know how using plastic is unhealthy for people and the environment, no action is not taken. Therefore, the first step is to represent alternative raw materials that are sustainable for water bottles, such as ceramic, glass, or paper. In addition to this, we should motivate people to use cloth bags on their shopping and reuseable plastic boxes for meal boxes that have a high demand after the pandemic is raised. After raising awareness, the second step will be motivating the students to act upon the idea of using alternative bottles. We will apply a strategy of reinforcement learning style by rewarding the students who shift from plastic bottles to zero-waste sustainable solutions. The awareness should be provided for personal health and sustainability on the campus. With double attention, people will have internal and external motivation to shift their plastic bottle usage to alternative materials.

Practical Appliance of the Project

This strategy will be applied by creating a competition between Bilkent University, METU, and Hacettepe University students. The feeling of being in a friendly competition and the possibility to gain a reward as a university will increase the impassion of the students and lead them to use eco-friendly bottles more than usual. Moreover, since students from these three universities communicate with each other, the probability of this project being heard will be high. The reward is not going to be concrete, but the university with the most participants will win the award of “Sustainable University.” Since these three universities are locally close, we believe that giving a reward with status will be more effective than giving a tangible reward. The first step that should be taken to participate in the competition is by attending the Jotform, which we will create. There will be sustainability-related questions that will be asked on Jotform, such as the university's name, faculty, and an image that proves they have a noninclusive plastic bottle, cloth bags, and meal box if they prefer eating from cafeterias. The faculty will be asked to see the statistics of which faculty students pay more attention to the sustainability of their campuses and to which faculties we succeed in influencing. After filling the form, we will analyze the data and compare it between three universities. The university which has the most participants is going to be awarded. With this competition, Bilkent University will reduce its plastic consumption, increase the campus's environmental sustainability, and encourage neighboring universities.