Tag Archives: Food waste

Food compost bin concept turns food waste and cardboard into fertilizer

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Our eating habits have changed drastically over the past years, especially after the recent boom in food delivery services. Unfortunately, this isn’t always for the best as it has encouraged unhealthy lifestyles and increased the amount of waste we produce. Of course, there are services that try to remedy that with healthy food options and more sustainable packaging, but those don’t always result in a reduction of how much we throw out at the end of the day, or even after each meal. Human food doesn’t have to go to waste, especially if it can be converted into food for other living creatures like plants. That’s the idea behind this compositing device that transforms not just your meal but also its packaging into something to keep your plants just as healthy as you.

Designer: Byeonkyu Park

That salad you didn’t finish might come in cardboard packaging, but the moment you throw it in the bin, it stops being healthy for the planet. Sure, both materials will decompose eventually, but not only will that take time, it also misses out on the opportunity to use those for something more beneficial in the long run. After all, they can turn into fertilizer, but only if they’re actually treated in a proper manner, which usually involves taking them to recycling or composting centers.

Toggle is a device concept that lets you cut off the middleman and do all of that at home, and it works by using both edible and inedible parts of your meal delivery. It utilizes “green” materials like food waste mixed with “brown” materials like paper and cardboard or even wood, pretty much the things that your food came in. In other words, nothing is wasted, unless your meal is wrapped in plastic instead.

The device doesn’t simply mix these two groups into some disgusting slosh. One part of the machine has a shredder to reduce cardboard and wood into tiny bits, while another is a grinder that cuts up the food waste. The components are heated to reduce the volume of the waste and turn the mixture into something almost similar to the soil you will dump it on. The result is homemade fertilizer that you can use for the plants you’re growing both indoors and in your backyard.

While the process of handling waste might sound and look icky, Toggle is designed to hide those details as much as possible. In fact, it’s made to look more like a stylish and sophisticated can, just one that deftly handles the food you would have thrown out indiscriminately. In addition to safety mechanisms to protect kids in the house, the concept device is made to look discreet, attractive, and easy to use. It’s meant to encourage a more responsible lifestyle that goes beyond just eating properly, making sure that your plants and the planet can also benefit from your healthier lifestyle.

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These beautiful tiles are actually made from fish scale waste

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Humans eat a lot of food that comes from plants and animals, but not all the parts of these living creatures are deemed edible or appetizing. These parts include internal organs, bones, and even skin, parts that get discarded and thrown out during processing. Unsurprisingly, this waste starts to pile up and cause harm to the planet, especially since there doesn’t seem to be any decrease in human appetite and consumption. Fortunately, some people have started to get smarter and use that human ingenuity to either help reduce food waste or use them for something completely different. In fact, some people have even discovered how beautiful this waste can be, such as these stunning tiles that would shock you to learn are made from ignored and discarded fish scales.

Designer: Erik de Laurens

Animal skins have plenty of uses, some more wasteful than others. Some skin can be eaten, of course, but others are simply taken for their material value. Leather has always been a controversial material because of this, loved for its natural properties but criticized for its cruel source. Fortunately, there are now attempts to create more sustainable alternatives to leather that don’t involve harmful plastics either.

Fish scales, on the other hand, are simply discarded because they aren’t exactly edible. They are thrown out by both food and aquaculture industries and add to the growing amount of waste in our environment. It turns out, however, that these seemingly useless scales have the components that make them as hard as stone yet as beautiful as marble. And thus, Scalelite was born. Using a sustainable process and no harmful ingredients, Scalelite transforms wasted and ugly fish scales into beautiful materials that can cover walls or floors and even become parts of furniture.

Scalelite also has other admirable properties beyond being 100% natural and attractive. It has natural fire resistance and is dirt-repellent, making it suitable for use in hospitality and retail applications. It’s easier to clean, too, even without using harmful detergents. And, of course, it’s completely recyclable, so you won’t have to fill guilty when you do have to throw the tiles away after probably decades of use.

It’s definitely encouraging to see such efforts to salvage what most of us have considered garbage and turn them into something not only useful but actually appealing as well. It gives credence to the expression that one man’s trash might be another one’s treasure. Sadly, Scalelite is just a small fish in a gigantic industry trying to make a difference, and we need a lot more of these sustainable materials to stop the planet from hurting.

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Kitchen Appliances designed to eliminate food waste + transform your kitchen into a zero waste space!

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Food Wastage has become a serious problem these days. In fact, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, one-third of the food produced in the world is wasted. This is primarily because we ourselves fail to understand how much food we consume, or we don’t know how to recycle or reuse the food that has been left over from previous meals. However, this is an issue that designers have been paying immense attention to nowadays. In an attempt to combat food wastage and to promote zero waste living, they have been coming up with innovative kitchen appliances! These products provide unique solutions to curb the wastage of food on a daily basis. They make zero waste living a reality. From a kitchen appliance that converts all your food waste into nutrient-rich soil, to a unique triangle-shaped food-waste processor – these kitchen appliances are all you need to end food wastage in your home once and for all!

1. Bubble

Designed by Savin Dimov and Altino Alex, Bubble is a food tracker, that monitors our food consumption, in an attempt to encourage a healthier lifestyle and to reduce food wastage. The food tracker comes with an app compatible with your smartphone. You can either order your groceries via the app or physically visit a grocery store and do your shopping. Once you’re home, you can place your groceries such as fruits, vegetables, milk, sodas, etc within Bubble. Bubble identifies and tracks all the items within. It directly sends updates to your smartphone, so you’re always aware of what’s in your kitchen! You can track which food products you consume the most, and what you consume the least. Bubble ensures all the storage data is at the tip of your fingers.

2. The Alone Food-Waste Processor

Rather than living with that old, rancid, smelly trash for 3-4 days, the Alone food-waste processor helps provide a discreet way of disposing of small amounts of food at a time. Its unique right-angled triangular shape helps it easily fit into a corner of your kitchen, and its tall design makes it easy to remove the waste bin and chuck your stuff in without bending over too much. The Alone food-waste processor then proceeds to break down your food, turning it from waste into a harmless, odorless, nutrient-rich fertilizer you can use in your own backyard or kitchen garden. A heating plate at the base helps accelerate the composting process, breaking food down into a crumbly mulch for as little as 30 days (instead of the regular 5-6 months).

3. Po

Gabriel Steinmann created P0 (pronounced pio like the letter and number) which stands for ‘project zero’  – a storage and shopping solution for food that aims to reduce consumption emissions. P0 helps us to switch to and maintain a plant-based diet and reduce the amount of food waste. The design blends organic and sustainable materials with an earthy aesthetic to invoke warmth and a more personal relationship with the items we use. Its ceramic body and textile lining help encourage a deeper appreciation for the food we consume and make us more aware of how much food we actually need to minimize wasting it. It is also a practical and attractive utensil in your kitchen – “a symbol of change, of becoming a little bit more human,” as rightly described by Steinmann.

4. Serva & FOSA® NFC Food Preservation System

The Serva & FOSA® NFC Food Preservation System is the ultimate system to ensure that your food remains fresh always. It keeps your food fresh longer than any conventional storage method could! Serva is a nifty little device that you attach to the food storage container. It utilizes NFC to connect with the use-friendly app on your smartphone. The app displays the food in your kitchen, and its shelf life. You can also share this information with others! These little devices are waterproof, and don’t need battery to function. They can last forever! FOSA® is a system of vaccum-sealable storage containers that can be stacked on top of each other. This tracking and storage system keeps your food fresh and healthy, while ensuring that your fridge is neat and organized.

5. The Clay Pantry

Clay has been used since ancient times as a storage solution for food and drinks, having grown up in India it is a big part of the culture and in fact, water stored in clay pots is always cooler (and sweeter!). The cooling effect is due to the porosity of earthenware which has natural cooling properties when soaked with water. Clay Pantry optimizes this property to give you a range of storage containers for small, urban homes. The Root Stool provides dry and dark storage space and the Tempered Box was created for produce that needs humid and cool conditions. The Fruit Shelf and Water Jug are self-explanatory. Clay Pantry’s modular nature makes it a perfect fit for compact apartments and for those looking for an eco-friendly storage solution for their produce.

6. The Terracooler

The Terracooler is a modern interpretation of the traditional Zeer pot or pot-in-pot refrigerator, an evaporative cooling refrigeration device that has been used for centuries and is still used today in countries across the globe, such as India and Nigeria. Like many designers today, Perry felt compelled to design her Terracooler after learning that 10% of household energy is taken up by domestic refrigerators. However, in the UK, where Perry is based, 14 million tons of food waste is accumulated each year. The Terracooler was designed by Perry to make sense of that perplexing ratio.

7. The FoodCycler

Eco-friendly and highly efficient, the Food Recycler is exactly that, it takes your food scraps and turns them into nutrient-rich soil, converting waste into resource. The FoodCycler reduces the food waste by up to 90% and provides the perfect soil for your garden, no matter how big or small. The system is straightforward – the device comes with a removable internal bucket which must be full before beginning the cycle. Taking only 3 hours to catalyze and produce fresh soil, the FoodCyler is practically always ready to go. On top of that, the device itself has a very clean look to it. With the inverted handle on the top lid, the FoodCycler has a perfect rectangular shape with some cozy edges to accentuate that open design aesthetic – welcome and ready for anyone to use.

8. Savel Flexible Food Saver

The Savel Flexible Food Saver is a smart alternative to the usual plastic zipper storage bags! The plastic zippers need to be thrown away after a single use, but Savel keeps the leftover fruits and vegetables in your kitchen as fresh as possible, and can be used for a long long time! It also helps you save and use the smaller items that are usually thrown away like a lemon wedge, or a single lime. Its flexible and bendable form allows it to perfectly fit against the curved cut side of any fruit or vegetable. You then place the silicon strap over the piece of fruit or veggie, securing Savel and the food item in place. It keeps your food fresh for upto a week!

9. Zero Waste Kitchen

This zero-waste kitchen is built from recycled stainless steel made in electric arc furnaces and it lasts forever. The large table is the core of the design, it is meant to be used as a cooking and eating surface. The structure has designated areas for glass containers, baskets for fruit and vegetables, a worm box, storage space for multi-purpose vessels, linen bags, and a vertical herb garden – it is indeed a highly functional and multi-faceted design! The worm box regularly provides humus which can be used for the herb garden and if the kitchen is in a dark area of the house or if you live in a country with little sunlight then you might need a daylight lamp for your herb garden.

10. The Mobile Thermoelectric Refrigerator

The Mobile thermoelectric refrigerator has been engineered to be durable, rugged, and look innovative. The chassis of the refrigerator is constructed in a way that allows the top-chilling unit to be removed while the bottom refrigeration unit is being transported. The chiller uses the water and heat transfer to cool the milk while excess warm water can be used for cleaning and bathing – and that is how it reduces the waste of resources too! The chassis is crafted from anodized aluminum to keep it lightweight and strong. It features an airless wheel system to avoid flats on rough terrain which also utilizes a regenerative hub that powers a battery to keep things cool while on the road. The multifunctional handle design makes it comfortable for the user to pull the refrigerator by hand while walking or even attach it to a bicycle or motorcycle for rapid transport.

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These sustainable sneakers are made from fruit waste!

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Sneaker culture is technically a part of fast fashion which contributes largely to the mounting waste problem. But if you can find a cool pair that is sustainably designed right down to its packaging, like the Hana sneakers then we’re all here for it! Designed by Italian sneaker brand ID.EIGHT, not only is this paid unisex and cruelty-free but it is made from materials that are by-products of the food industry and are counted as waste – apple skin and hearts, grape skin, seeds, and pineapple leaves!

Since the textile industry is the second most polluting in the world and intensive farming is a plague for the planet, the brand chose to produce the sneakers in Italy using only ecological and cruelty-free materials. Inspired by the 90s with references to the navy look, the sustainable shoes express the ironic and dynamic style of ID.EIGHT. The contrast between the upper in white recycled polyester and the AppleSkin details in shades of red and blue create a mix of contemporary and light colors.

They use four materials derived from apples, grapes, seeds, and pineapples. Piñatex , made with the waste leaves of pineapple grown in the Philippines; Vegea , obtained from the bio-polymerization of marc in Italy; AppleSkin , obtained from the bio-polymerization of apple peels and cores always in Italy. It features lycra and recycled mesh for inserts on the upper, sole, laces, and the label is also made of recycled materials.

The pineapple industry produces around 40,000 tons of leaves every year and is considered a waste material they are usually left to rot or burn. Today it is possible to recover them to create a biodegradable and cruelty-free material. With 480 leaves (16 pineapple plants) it is possible to obtain 1 square meter of material.

Over 7 million tons of marc are discarded every year by the wine sector, an unacceptable waste

Stalks, skins, and grape seeds are part of the “marc”, the residue of the grape juice extraction process. Today it is a strong, sustainable and flexible material. 310 million new plastics are produced and placed on the market every year, and only 9% of this is recycled which is why they chose to use recycled plastic for some components of the sneakers, such as the laces, the label, and the ribbon. The sole is also made up of 30% recycled rubber!

“In recent years, the amount of agri-food waste used to make sustainable products has gone from 0 to over 30 tons per month. A great resource is used to produce, for example, the ‘paper’ used for handkerchiefs and kitchen rolls, and the material we use for our sneakers,” adds the team. Even the packaging is sustainable, it is made with recycled cardboard and the shipping bags are made from at least 80% recycled polyethylene and are 100% recyclable. You will also find a ball of earth and seeds covered with clay – plant in a pot or throw in a gray area of ​​your city to spread some flower power!

Designer: ID.EIGHT

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Kitchen Appliances to eliminate food wastage and live that Zero Waste Life!

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Food Wastage has become a serious problem these days. In fact, according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, one-third of the food produced in the world is wasted. This is primarily because we ourselves fail to understand how much food we consume, or we don’t know how to recycle or reuse the food that has been leftover from previous meals. However, this is an issue that designers have been paying immense attention to nowadays. In an attempt to combat food wastage and to promote zero waste living, they have been coming up with innovative kitchen gadgets! These products provide unique solutions to curb the wastage of food on a daily basis. They make zero waste living a reality!

This conceptual device called The Mother’s Heart has the answers…yes, just like our mothers in the kitchen. There is a Korean practice of covering food with a cloth (Sang bo) which has been a tradition for centuries and has worked well – a ramie or silk fabric covering keeps it ventilated in the summers while a thicker fabric keeps it insulated in the winters. Inspired by this, the Mother’s Heart was designed to keep food fresh and retain its original nutrient quality. It is a simple device that is crafted like a dome food covering and an accompanying base plate. The covering has a dial on top and that lets you adjust the settings based on the food you’ve cooked. You can select between refrigeration or warmth and there is a timer feature that lets you select for how long you want to keep it running.

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Ronald Tan’s idea is that even a small portion of leftover rice is food nevertheless, and should not be treated as waste. The Mirai Rice Cooker is designed to not just flawlessly cook your rice (with multiple settings on its control panel), but it also allows you to transform your leftover rice into crispy rice cakes for a post-meal snack! The base of the cooker comes molded with a pattern that allows you to place your leftover rice into triangular pieces. The Mirai then cooks the rice into flat crispy cakes that can be easily scooped off with the spatula that comes built into the Mirai. The inner surface of the cooker comes with a Teflon coating to ensure your rice grains never get stuck to the Mirai, making it not just easier to cook with, but also keep clean!

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ovie_2

Food wastage is quite a serious matter. We buy things, forget we’ve bought them, and throw them away after weeks because they’ve gone stale. It only makes sense that we rely on AI to combat food wastage, and the Ovie Smarterware wants to do just that. The Smarterware ecosystem revolves around smart tags, that store the nature of the item, its purchase date, and its expiry date. These tags fit into either Ovie’s Smarterware container or the Smarterware clip and keep track of what you’re buying as well as when you’re buying them. When items start sitting around too long, the Smarterware clips ping you either on your phone or via your smart speaker, not only letting you know your veggies/meats are going stale, but they also browse through recipes for you to use those ingredients in!

Designed by Savin Dimov and Altino Alex, Bubble is a food tracker, that monitors our food consumption, in an attempt to encourage a healthier lifestyle and to reduce food wastage. Research shows that most of us don’t even know what food items we have in our kitchen! And a large number of us also don’t know what we exactly need to buy when we’re replenishing our groceries. Bubble promises to track, store, and replenish our food items in accordance with our needs. The food tracker comes with an app compatible with your smartphone. You can either order your groceries via the app or physically visit a grocery store and do your shopping. Once you’re home, you can place your groceries such as fruits, vegetables, milk, sodas, etc within Bubble.

The KALEA Automatic Kitchen Composter converts your food waste into a nutrient-rich fertilizer! You can easily toss your leftover food scraps into the automatic composter, and it transforms them into a nutrient-dense fertilizer within 48 hours. The fertilizer is almost like soil and can be used in your personal garden to tend to your plants! The composter can be connected to an app as well!

Designed to provide food containers with high-vacuum storage to curb bacterial growth, Zhuhai’s vacuum storage system boasts that it can keep your leftovers sealed for three to five times longer than the standard food storage container. The hard plastic containers come with pre-delineated food zones that help users separate their food items and with a vacuum-sealed lid that works as the base for the accompanying pump. Zhuhai designed the vacuum pump to be automatic so that once it’s placed on top of a container’s lid and activated, the pump immediately begins pulling out the excess air inside of the container until it reaches a high-vacuum degree of -0.03 Mpa.

Most of today’s refrigerators are like deep bookshelves that come with air conditioning. They store a lot and keep our food items fresh, but as they fill, older food items just pile up and rot, so cleaning out your refrigerator ends up being more laborious of a task than it should be. In order to combat this, Nicolaou created PRESENTA, a new fridge design that keeps the storage capacity of the typical refrigerator but ditches the unfriendly depths. Three modular, three-tier shelving units comprise PRESENTA and thankfully they make both storage organization and inevitable clean-up much more approachable. Detachable, plastic shelves line the swing-out design of this refrigerator and they can be swapped out and reorganized in order to optimize storage and cleanability. When the user opens the refrigerator, each of the inside contents is immediately made both visible and accessible.

Designed by Designer Dot, Alone is a food waste processor for single-person households! It is a compact and ergonomic food waste processor that works perfectly for homes with only a single resident, for example, university students. You can place the food within the processor, and it will grind the scraps into powder form. An attached HEPA filter prevents any bad odors from being emitted.

Designed by Munich-based company brezzl., the Fridge Eye is designed to work with any fridge, attaching to a wall on the fridge, or a cabinet on the fridge door. The wireless device runs on batteries and boasts of a battery life that spans years. The trick is in the way the Fridge Eye is programmed. It isn’t a camera that streams video footage on command, it just sends you a picture of your fridge’s interiors every time the door shuts. The Fridge Eye uses a temperature sensor to identify when someone opens the fridge door (i.e., when the temperature suddenly drops), and it conveniently clicks a picture once said person has shut the fridge door.

Whether it’s oil paints, toothpaste, or tomato puree, the Big Squeeze makes sure you get a bang for your buck by squeezing every last drop out. Practically steamrolling tubes with its powerful metallic rollers, the Big Squeeze helps eliminate wastage by physically forcing every bit of residue out of tubes. The corrugated rollers help by getting into small corners to make sure nothing is left behind, while the Big Squeeze’s width is enough to accommodate everything from tubes of paint, or toothpaste, to even kitchen foods. It comes with an ergonomic hand-grip that mimics the style of a paintbrush, while a large winged key on the side lets you easily twist away to squeeze. Plus if you ever get a little food on it, just go right ahead and chuck it in the dishwasher!

This sustainable storage container + shopping bag reduces your consumption emissions and food waste!

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Open your refrigerator – how many plastic containers do you see? Now open that cabinet where you store your shopping bags – do you really need that many plastic bags? We often store in our takeout boxes/plastic containers and keep those plastic bags in hopes to reuse someday because we forget to carry our cloth bags to the store. Most of these little habits are formed because it is convenient and cheap but we do them without thinking about the effects of its continued use on our environment. To solve both problems with one design, Gabriel Steinmann created P0 (pronounced pio like the letter and number) which stands for ‘project zero’  – a storage and shopping solution for food that aims to reduce consumption emissions.

P0 helps us to switch to and maintain a plant-based diet and reduce the amount of food waste. The design blends organic and sustainable materials with an earthy aesthetic to invoke warmth and a more personal relationship with the items we use. Its ceramic body and textile lining help encourage a deeper appreciation for the food we consume and make us more aware of how much food we actually need to minimize wasting it. It is also a practical and attractive utensil in your kitchen – “a symbol of change, of becoming a little bit more human,” as rightly described by Steinmann.

The jury at iF Design Awards gave PO the ‘iF Design Talent Award 2020’ because it raises awareness and facilitates sustainable food consumption using a very beautifully designed functional product. “The design will appeal to early adopters who will become ambassadors for this product. The whole process is well thought-out and the combination of the different materials is aesthetically pleasing and endorses the entire concept. The possibility of customization makes it even more personal and inspires others to change their food consumption habits,” added the jury.

This self-sufficient, parametric, adaptable storage-and shopping solution is something I would really love to see taking over the world and make that sustainable switch in our lifestyle convenient enough to ditch the plastic containers and shopping bags.

Designer: Gabriel Steinmann

This smart food storage device regulates temperature to keep your meals fresh in any climate!

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I lived in various different climatic settings and one thing that is a persistent small problem causing large amounts of waste is storing food. If it is a tropical climate and you leave the food outside it will go bad due to the heat and if you are in somewhere cold and dry then you have to reheat your food in the microwave multiple times which is bad for your health. So how do we cover and store our food to reduce waste and effort? This conceptual device called The Mother’s Heart has the answers…yes, just like our mothers in the kitchen.

There is a Korean practice of covering food with a cloth (Sang bo) which has been a tradition for centuries and has worked well – a ramie or silk fabric covering keeps it ventilated in the summers while a thicker fabric keeps it insulated in the winters. Inspired by this, the Mother’s Heart was designed to keep food fresh and retain its original nutrient quality. It is a simple device that is crafted like a dome food covering and an accompanying base plate. The covering has a dial on top and that lets you adjust the settings based on the food you’ve cooked. You can select between refrigeration or warmth and there is a timer feature that lets you select for how long you want to keep it running. The bottom heating coil can maintain an internal temperature of 60 Celcius or higher to store food like noodles and curry. The upper cooling fan can keep the temperature below 5 Celcius to store dishes like salads or sandwiches.

“When I came home and lift up the cloth to have my meal, I could feel my mother’s warmth in the warmth of the rice. This design is inspired by sang bo so that mothers can still give their children fresh meals infused with their love,” elaborates Seojoung as he recalls the nostalgia that led him to create the award-winning Mother’s Heart. This is not only a convenient device for mothers but also anyone who works and cooks their own meals. It has the ability to help us reduce food waste and consume radiation-free meals. While meal-prep is great, there is nothing like a freshly cooked meal after you finish your chores – no one likes a wilted lettuce salad or a microwaved mac-n-cheese.

Designer: Yu Seojoung

This triangle-shaped food-waste processor fits perfectly in the corner of your kitchen

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A common problem in smaller households (and I’m fairly familiar with this as someone who lives on his own) is that the garbage bag never fills up in one day. Having fewer people live in a house obviously means lesser waste created on a day-to-day basis, which means it takes a good 3-4 days to really fill up your trash before you chuck it out.

Rather than living with that old, rancid, smelly trash for 3-4 days, the Alone food-waste processor helps provide a discreet way of disposing of small amounts of food at a time. Its unique right-angled triangular shape helps it easily fit into a corner of your kitchen, and its tall design makes it easy to remove the waste-bin and chuck your stuff in without bending over too much. The Alone food-waste processor then proceeds to break down your food, turning it from waste into a harmless, odorless, nutrient-rich fertilizer you can use in your own backyard or kitchen-garden. A heating plate at the base helps accelerate the composting process, breaking food down into a crumbly mulch as little as 30 days (instead of the regular 5-6 months), while an air outlet on the top helps let gases on the inside escape, but not before passing it through a HEPA and Activated Carbon filter to take out those microorganisms and odor molecules, keeping your kitchen odor-free and safe!

Designers: Designer Dot & Hyeona Cho

Edible food packaging made from seaweed has the potential to offset carbon emissions entirely!

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I don’t even know where to begin with the problem of plastic pollution – it is a heavy one and in literal terms, the amount of plastic on this planet is almost the same as the weight of the entire human population. Let that sink in. Single-use plastic makes for more than 50% of the plastic waste problem and if we continue at the rate we are going right now, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050. According to the UN Environment, one million plastic drinking bottles are purchased every minute around the world, while up to 5 trillion single-use plastic bags are used worldwide every year (read more here). In total, half of all plastic produced is designed to be used only once and then thrown away – this is a serious problem and Wenwen Fan of the Royal College of Arts is using her design abilities to do her bit in providing a solution.

Seaweed is touted as green gold by scientists who are exploring its uses as a sustainable alternative for single-use plastic. What makes it interesting is that it can be edible and has high nutritional value too! It is already a staple in Asian diets and also in skincare routines, so it was time to push the boundaries and turn these into vegan wrappers. Made from seaweed and vegetable extracts, these low-cal wrappers can be used as edible packaging for snacks and dissolvable pouches that add extra nutritional value to your food like vitamins, minerals as well as polysaccharides from that support your gut health. The seaweed extract is then dehydrated and the prototypes are examined in different temperature settings as well as tested for waterproof properties. Turtles eat seaweed and they live to be 100 so why not!?

“As a multidisciplinary experience designer, I am passionate about designing a cohesive, integrated set of experiences for behavior change. From embedding AR into an immersive Alzheimer’s simulation experience to creating sustainable edible packaging from seaweed, I believe a good experience design should be context-driven, behaviorally informed, and culturally relevant,” says Fan. The wrappers can customize for different flavors and nutritions for a more personalized product combination on Seaweed U which will be an online platform dedicated to the product. It is an ingenious way of packaging food while also being a source of soluble fiber – I see this design as a win-win with the only hurdle being the scale of mass production should a big brand adopt this packaging design. Seaweed U encourages a more convenient, playful, and pleasurable diet solution as well as reducing plastic pollution from the food industry.

There are three suggested scenarios in using these seaweed wrappers: Trick or Treat, The Lazy Pouch, and Super Chef. Trick or Treat is a healthy snack made from fruity-taste seaweed skins. Through combining a more familiar food palate like nuts and berries with the nutritional skins, it enables people to enjoy seaweed through daily snacking without being held back by the green and slimy texture. The Lazy Pouch is a single-serve, dissolvable pouch with different types of seaweed like wakame, dulse, and kelp, etc. that offers a convenient and quality meal supplement for those living a fast-paced lifestyle. Super Chef offers a creative DIY food experience in the kitchen where people can play with this versatile material in combination with ordinary ingredients to make unique dishes like transparent onigiris, ice cream raviolis, and colorful spring rolls.

We all know eating a more plant-based diet has a direct impact on climate change and seaweed can be of great help. According to scientists, building seaweed farming networks on just 9% of the world’s ocean could offset carbon emission entirely – that can buy us more time to focus on the larger plastic problem. Seaweed U aims to help people feel comfortable with different superfoods that add immense benefits to their health as well as the health of our planet.

Designer: Wenwen Fan

This 3D printed sustainable clay range is an indigenous storage solution that reduces food waste!

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All over the world, we face the challenge of waste generation and management. Most people think that plastic is the biggest culprit but you would be surprised to know that food waste the largest waste contributor worldwide. To put it into context, food is responsible for 44% while plastic is responsible for 12% – that is a problem we need to fix and designer Lea Randebrock is taking a step in the right direction with her Clay Pantry collection.

About 1/4th of the food waste, which is generated in industrialized countries goes back to the actions of consumers and the busy lifestyles of western countries in combination with a lack of knowledge. Old-timey solutions like root-cellars made it possible to store produce throughout winter but now we have cheap food that is quick to cook and always available which has been taken for granted. People are not only detached from their environment but also from the food they consume and Clay Pantry wants to change that approach through its organic design. It provides a suitable space for fruits and vegetables which make up for the highest waste count. Inspired by traditional storing methods, this collection was created to be used within our modern lifestyle settings – the best of both worlds. The furniture-container collection includes the Root Stool, Fruit Shelf, Tempered Box, and Watering Jug which are all crafted around the behavior and actions of watering plants. “By watering the objects like plants, the focus goes effortlessly to the objects and the content,” describes Randebrock who has been a student of furniture design and is inspired by indigenous materials.

Clay has been used since ancient times as a storage solution for food and drinks, having grown up in India it is a big part of the culture and in fact, water stored in clay pots is always cooler (and sweeter!). The cooling effect is due to the porosity of earthenware which has natural cooling properties when soaked with water. Clay Pantry optimizes this property to give you a range of storage containers for small, urban homes. The Root Stool provides dry and dark storage space and the Tempered Box was created for produce that needs humid and cool conditions. The Fruit Shelf and Water Jug are self-explanatory. Clay Pantry’s modular nature makes it a perfect fit for compact apartments and for those looking for an eco-friendly storage solution for their produce.

“In the situation followed by the challenging spring of 2020, I believe it is more important than ever to include empathy in our society. Any aspects of everyday life are challenged and need to be redesigned and restructured. While this is a challenging time, this is a chance to question the status quo. As a designer, I hope to contribute in a positive way to a Post-Corona society,” says Randebrock, a student of the Royal College of Arts. She has used a traditional food storage method but brought it to life using 3D printing – the best of both worlds is embodied in this collection that serves us and our environment.

Designer: Lea Randebrock

clay pantry

clay pantry 1

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