FADCOM Students and Staff Present the Tapatón at an International Design Conference

ESPOL’s Faculty of Art, Design, and Audiovisual Communication (FADCOM) took its “Alquimia Plástica – Tapatón” project to the international stage during the University of Palermo’s International Design Week, where students and the Department of Communication presented a proposal demonstrating how design, popular culture, and gamification can strengthen student participation in sustainability initiatives.

The presentation took place on July 29, 2026, at the Social and Sustainable Design Forum, as part of the panel discussion “Waste, the Circular Economy, and Upcycling in Product Design,” and was led by students Patricia del Carmen Robelly Criollo, Rosa Nicole Ceballos Vargas, Romina Belén Gómez Haro, Raúl Isaac Ruiz Navarrete, and Cristhian Antonio Molina Barberán. The presentation was coordinated by José Luis Castro, a communications analyst at FADCOM, who leads the communications strategy for the Alquimia Plástica project and the Tapatón. During the presentation, the team presented their research titled “Alquimia Plástica: Recycling, Design, and Student Participation for Sustainability,” which focused on a common issue: recycling campaigns are often perceived as abstract obligations, which limits community participation.

In response to this challenge, the project developed a gamified experience for collecting and recycling plastic bottle caps based on three strategic pillars: participatory activities and challenges that encourage student engagement; the promotion of the circular economy, where waste regains value by being transformed into new materials for the Product Design program; and the use of elements from popular art and local music to connect the environmental message with the community’s cultural and emotional codes.

The research also demonstrated how strategic communication planning and the incorporation of local cultural references helped increase the project’s digital reach and engagement within the university community, establishing Tapatón as a sustainability initiative that goes beyond recycling to become an exercise in collective ownership. Participation in this international conference reaffirms FADCOM’s commitment to generating innovative solutions that integrate design, communication, and sustainability, showcasing the work developed at the school to academic circles with an international reach.