This was a 5 month school project to take on the global food waste epidemic. Our team of 6 comprised of Shruti Nivas, Udita Joshi, Ashwini Bapat, Cydelle Zuzarte, Meenakshi Kamat and Vipul Mane (Digital Designer).
To contextualize the severity of food waste, we created something called "The Orange Metaphor":
Our creativity sessions were based on the insight statements.
Our concepts ranged from products in the store to help you buy only what you need, to cooking aids, to food- waste donation drives. Eventually we were asked to focus on better methods of storing and preserving food.
During our creativity phase, we devised three separate food storage units. Some of the highlights are shown below:
During our research, we learned that storing carrots vertically with their tops cut off, made them last longer.
We added a "left-overs" storage unit, made out of terracotta that kept the contents cool (by adding water on top) or warm (internal heating system).
The effects of ethylene gas were used to our benefit, by allowing it to ripen other fruits if required, or stopping it to store produce longer.
Some herbs keep pests away, for example: sage repels weevils.
Hydrated storage for vegetables that could benefit from it.
A monster mock-up of all the elements in our product ecosystem.
A hypothetical website for Nativelement gives consumers a choice to "buy what you want". This ties in well with our goal to reduce overall waste (food or otherwise) and also to seamlessly integrate into already-stocked kitchens today.
To further our green movement, we suggested that all basic assembly instructions would be downloadable as pdfs on the website. The products would be shipped in simple cardboard packaging, to be easily flattened and recycled.
