Veggie-Table

Abstract

Food waste is the fastest growing issue of our time. Countries in the EU discard an estimated 89 million tons of food every year. Worse, the food waste will increase to about 126 million tons in 2020 if we do not take action (European Union Committee, 2014). Moreover, most countries are burying food waste in the landfills. This manner of disposal produces methane gas because of the high water content of wasted food, and even contaminates soil and water that we are relying on to live (Osteen, C., Gottlieb, J., & Vasavada, U., 2012). As solutions from food-related organizations and the government, many public campaigns and strict regulations have been carried out to decrease food waste at the production and consumption levels for years.This graduation project started from the global interest: the reduction in food waste. Specifically, the project aims at the consumption level. The reason is that twice or three times more food waste is produced at the consumption level than at the other three stages, which are production, processing and distribution (European Court of Auditors, 2016). During this project, the five design phases were executed for six months.To investigate the reasons in-depth, this project researched and analyzed the consumer’s behaviours towards food. For this study, face-to-face interviews and Food Diary surveys were conducted based on the research questions. The user research data was analysed in several directions.Through the user research, it was apparently found that vegetables were discarded in the home every week and the situation should be improved to reduce vegetable waste. The results of the in-depth user research were interpreted in a design statement to create some design ideas. The ideas were estimated by the four criteria which are feasibility, usability, aesthetics and effectiveness, and one out of five ideas was chosen as the final design concept which names Veggie-Table. As the project completion, the concept development and evaluation were conducted. In summarize, a final design proposal was made that the product not only inspires users to cook a meal using vegetables, but also helps them to not neglect any leftover vegetables in the refrigerator. This is due to the fact that the Veggie-Table is an integrated system for vegetable storage and preparation.