waste

A sustainable nutrient system for college, aiming to educate students to save

My Role: Research Awareness Build Design Poster Design

Team:
Myself
Service Designers
Environmental Designers

Tool:
Photoshop Adobe Illustrator After Effects

Duration:
10 weeks

Background

Savannah College of Art and Design would like to build a sustainable place, where what would be wasted could be transformed into valuable. Collabrated with Net Impact and Bon Appetit, We envision a vibrant food and flower garden where visitors stop, walk, shop, and learn. We plan for a sustainable, multi-pronged composting and anaerobic digestion system that follows the earth’s model of turning waste into food, generating energy, and creating more abundance.

SCAD’s Back 40

Honoring 40 creative years, SCAD Back40 is a sustainable urban farm featuring an apiary that offers a haven for bees and pollinators, fresh produce and community enrichment through education. SCAD Back40 provides regular donations to Second Harvest of Coastal Georgia, as well as an observation area on-site for schools and organizations.

Net Impact

Net Impact is an international organization that connects university students in order to amplify their efforts as change makers for a sustainable future. SCAD’s Net Impact chapter furthers Net Impact’s campaigns in Savannah.

Bon Appetit

Bon Appetit, SCAD’s award-winning food service provider, already works with local farms interested in renewing the salinized clay that is common in the Savannah area.

Challenge

A large amount of food waste has been produced every day at the Hive, which is the largest dinning hall at SCAD. Strict food regulation and inevitable wasted caused by students make the Hive hard to have a effecitive way to control food waste.

Timeline

Solution

This product-service system map illustrates the proposed SCAD food management system, including all construction and material flows between multiple locations There are seven main locations in the system, including The Hive, SCAD Back 40, the anaerobic digestion facility, in-vessel composting facility, market, equestrian center, and sports field.

Awareness Campaign

Food Saving and composting education

Freshman Experience

Observation

Insight: Almost everyone who threw away their waste before putting their plates on the food rack separated the food waste from the paper waste such as napkins.

Method

Observation teams went to The Hive dining hall during lunch and dinner to quietly watch students’ eating behaviors. This way, the team could see how food waste happens at The Hive

Using the diagram shown, we measured how much food waste was left on students’ plate when they put them on the conveyor belt. The quantities measured in order from least amount to greatest are: clean, plate, fingertip, thumb, hand, palm and full.

Result & Insights

Total: 252 students Plates without waste: 79 Plates with waste: 173

Finger tip: 17 Thumb: 29 Handful: 54 Palm: 43 Fist: 25

Insight: Almost everyone who threw away their waste before putting their plates on the food rack separated the food waste from the paper waste such as napkins.