BEE GREEN: The Sustainable Food Movement

I had the opportunity to lead an international team for this project during my Master Program and used rapid prototyping to find quick solutions to our chosen topic "Food Waste".

Identifying Problems

We brainstormed a number of problems that are critical now and are affecting the world and our environment. We narrowed it down at the end to "Food Waste" as our final chosen topic. We developed a solution for this topic by using "Rapid Prototyping Method" and delivered a solution with a limited amount of time. This project helped us exercise rapid prototyping and most importantly finding a solution on a tight schedule.

Field Research + Observation

The world has too many local and foreign supermarkets where massive production overtakes and critical amounts of products are thrown away. The amount of food waste in particular grows every year and has been an ongoing problem for decades.

In 2011 a study estimated the total of global food loss and waste to around one third of the edible parts of food produced for human consumption, amounting to about 1.3 billion tons per year.

Farmers, restaurants and supermarkets throw away millions of tons of edible food each year. 

User Story & Solution Proposal

We developed and used a specific user story in order to deliver a tailored solution.

Our User Story Motto: "I am a Biology student on a low weekly budget. I shop food based on price, the lower the better".

We developed a Sustainable Food Movement Project with an entire integrated farming system. It provides a personalised service for every person to be able to grow their own food at a smaller scale. The whole service is explained on our video here showed below. 

The video was a rapid prototype showing how the service works by using our User Story.

Opportunities

There are no personalised greenhouse services where you can have your own farm and grow your own food but also the option for someone else taking care of it for you if desired.

Advantages

. Cheap

. Easy to maintain

Personalized

. Opportunity to get free plants as rewards.

. See plant growth status on your mobile devices.

. Avoid plants that are too ripe to rotten and be thrown away.

. Control the amount of food you buy versus the food you eat.

. Eat locally, eat seasonally.

Greenhouse Project Product Results

. Educational

. Changes Behaviours : buy less quantity in order to produce less food waste. Control your intake, reap the plant at its best when you need it, eat locally, seasonally. People can start caring more about wasting less.

How can you contribute and help the Environment by using this service?

. You will decrease food waste

. Help local farmers

. Recycle Earth: by bringing your own bio food waste material from home, you can help us make fertiliser out of it. The fertiliser can be used to nurture the plants in your own farm and keep the cycle going.

From Earth to Earth.

BEE GREEN is a collective project conceived and developed in MAID (Masters of Integrated Design International) at the Bauhaus city of Dessau in Hochschule Anhalt University, Germany.