Household waste: Developing a product/service for households to reduce, reuse or recycle their waste

This report contains the graduation project for the master ‘Design for Interaction’ of the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering at the Technical University of Delft. The project was conducted for the foundation ‘Masters that Matter’, which aims to solve todays’ societal problems through design. The problem tackled in this project is the excessive household waste we are dealing with nowadays. ‘Since 1950 the amount of household waste has multiplied by four’ (Compendium voor de leefomgeving). To understand how this problem came into being three research questions were answered through literature, desktop and user research. 1.How come the amount of household waste has multiplied by four since 1950? 2.Which household waste stream is most promising to tackle? 3.What do people throw away and why? Answering these research questions resulted in insights that determined the project’s focus. We are distanced form the products in our lives; we don’t know were they are coming from, how they are made and who made them for us. This results in a lack of involvement and therefor a lack of respect. As well the benefits presented to us to decrease our discarding behavior are rational and functional benefits; they are weak benefits that hardly influence our behavior. If reducing discarding were emotionally more beneficial, it would be causing a higher impact on our behavior. The most promising household waste stream is food waste because of its high environmental impact, its quantity and the power of households to make a change. Therefor the project’s focus became creating involvement with food to reduce household food wasting behavior. This evolved to the design statement: “I want to create involvement with the circular food chain to evoke personal stories behind the food, to make food more present in people’s life” Out of this statement, the ‘Trap & Hap’ concept evolved. ‘Trap & Hap’ is a service that offers a fun day out with family or friends by providing personalized cycling tours that guide people to local food producers to experience how their food is made. At the same time they can pick up fresh local ingredients for a home made dish. ‘Trap & Hap’ increases the involvement with food by letting people experience how their food is made. Meeting the producer personally increases the emotional involvement. This increase in involvement results in more respect for the food people received and will finally result in a decrease in the food wasting behavior.