Overview
F*Waste is a campaign project focused on raising awareness on the global issue of food waste. The outcome of the project was a series of products that intervene in people’s everyday life to remind them and help them take action.
Problem Space
Every day we throw away edible food and as the population increases, so does the waste. The issue is that we do not understand the magnitude of the problem and how our actions can make an impact.
Approach
Our approach was to intervene in the user journey with creative products that help provide clarity on how to reduce food while illustrating how a small action can have a big impact.
Project Outcome
Shopping Bags Collection
A quarter of the food we buy ends up wasted. Imagine walking out of the supermarket with four bags, dropping one in the parking lot and not bothering to pick it up. The first intervention, focused on communicating this idea through a series of shopping bags. The three bags prevent customers from buying a full bag worth of groceries in a playful way.
The "Mind The Gap"
The False Bottom
The Double Handle
Kitchenware Collection
Focusing on the consumption stage, research shows that reducing the plate size by 9%, we can eliminate 25% of food waste. The way this is communicated in the products is by slanting one side. The slant decreases the serving area of the plate, making people serve themselves less without noticing. It has been proven that people cannot tell the difference in portion sizes that are 20% smaller.
The Plate
The Bowl
The Cup
Research
Research Insights
Every day we find ourselves throwing away edible food, this can be a half-finished sandwich or perfectly good lettuce past its “use by date”. Most of us do this all over the world and as the population increases, so does the waste. As it stands, there are 200,000 people more than there was yesterday, and this number will continue to grow. So we all need to recognise the issue and change our wasteful ways.
The food we waste has a bigger impact than most of us think. For example, 25% of all the climate change we are seeing can be attributed back to the food and the choices we are making about what we eat on a daily basis. This is twice as much the global warming pollution produced by cars.
Unfortunately, this is only a glimpse of the problem produced by people wasting their food.
How can we challenge this problem?
Through our research, we found that there are thousands of products in the market aimed to practically solve this problem. However, we quickly realised that people don’t realise the magnitude of the problem and they do not take action.
So, our approach is to raise awareness in a subtle and creative way. We looked into the user’s journey and the areas we saw the potential to intervene were: when the products were bought and when they were consumed. The way we decided to intervene was with creative products that would prevent consumers from wasting and at the same time illustrate how a small action can have a big impact.
Process
Skething and Prototyping
We worked through multiple rounds of sketching and prototyping to refine our ideas and develop a coherent visual language throughout all of the products. Also, we had to ensure the mechanics of our models were accurate as our final designs were forwarded to a local manufacturer to be built out of solid ABS.
