Cumulus Green 2024

honorable mention

ODDS&FRIENDS app

by

Honorable Mention

ODDS&FRIENDS app

Johannes Englmann, Franziska Engel, Robert Heiser, Viviana Reckert

Duale Hochschule Baden-Württemberg Ravensburg, Germany
Previous
Next

One third of all food produced worldwide is thrown away. We are able to change this. We can use these resources to avoid that food is thrown away. The food we waste is missing elsewhere in the world. We in the western world can change our behavior and help that those resources could be used where it’s really needed. That’s why we decided to develop an app that helps avoiding food waste and also raise awareness for the topic of foodwaste and climate change. Climate change – also responsible for the fact that there will be even more hunger in the future.

Our Solution

ODDS&FRIENDS, an app where young people enter their food leftovers and meet up for cooking. You add your leftover food via a photo mechanism to the app. Every Thursday, depending on the food you have previously entered, you will be thrown together to meet up and cook together your leftovers with other people. By coming together and using up their odds and ends we want to connect this change of habits with positive emotions. The exciting challenges like e.g. eating without hands at every ODDS&FRIENDS event support this.

Through these cooking events, food is recycled that would have otherwise ended up in the trash. At the same time, participants meet new people, have an inexpensive dinner, and have the chance to form new friendships. The long term goal is to change the foodwaste behavior of young people.

OKO – A hive for Nigeria

by

Honorable Mention

OKO – A hive for Nigeria

Robine Baptiste, Gibert Gabriel, Bui Khanh, Brondi Allegra

IIM – Digital School Paris, France
Previous
Next

Feeding nine billion people in the world in 2050 is surely one of the most complex challenges that our species will have to face during this century. How can we imagine that with enough resources to feed us all, there are still such great differences across the globe?Indeed, in absolute numbers, Asia holds the sad record of the largest number of malnourished people, but it is Africa that is the most seriously affected in terms of percentage with an increase in 2021, reaching 21% of malnourished people.

Nigeria, in particular, has the highest infant mortality rate, largely due to increasing malnutrition. Yet Nigeria is one of the most resource-rich countries in West Africa in terms of livestock and agriculture. But between conflicts of use between farmers and herders, political conflicts, terrorist groups, insufficient means and unstable markets, the agricultural situation in Nigeria cannot reach its full potential.

This led us to the following question: How can Nigerian agricultural markets contribute to strengthening West Africa’s food sovereignty?

OKO is a platform for investment in a Nigeria-wide mobile hive program. The main areas of conflict in Nigeria at the moment are around the resources needed by herders and farmers alike, such as water bodies and forests. The role of bees in biodiversity is well known, and bees could allow farmers to obtain better harvests, both in quantity and quality, when hives are placed in or near fields. When the harvest period is over, the hives can be moved to grazing areas that are unoccupied for part of the year. In this way, farmers would not need more and more planting space and herders could use their plots full time. In addition to reducing conflicts, the resources produced by these bees, be it honey, wax, royal jelly, can be processed and used for the food or health trade. This would not only boost the agricultural yield, but also the biodiversity of the area as a whole and the local economy, and would allow for the large-scale production of a certified quality product. From a more global perspective, all these improvements could benefit the whole of West Africa, where Nigeria would become a central place for export trade.

OKO’s business model is based on a system of ‘sponsorship’ and collaborative financing, whether by individuals or companies. Each actor can become a sponsor of a part or of a set of hives, for which he will receive in return a part of the elaborated products. The funding provided will be used to supply equipment to local actors but also to train them in modern beekeeping techniques.

The solution provided by OKO is a long term one, for which the benefits will be observed in several years but which constitute a basis and an anchor point of a more global strategy of reinforcement of the agricultural force already present in Nigeria, as well as the reinforcement of the stability of the local and international markets thanks to reliable and quality products.

RE:ME – reuse return recycle

by

Honorable Mention

RE:ME – reuse return recycle

Catherine Wolter

Universität der Künste Berlin, Germany
Previous
Next

40% of the waste on the street is caused by disposable food packaging. In Germany alone, 770 T of takeaway packaging is generated every day. The largest share is accounted by packaging made of expanded polystyrene. Therefore, from July 2021 on, the EU Commission has introduced a regulation banning polystyrene food packaging. Plastics consisting of microparticles, such as polystyrene, are particularly difficult to dispose of. They break down into tiny particles and are easily released into the environment.

RE:ME is a reusable solution for expanded polystyrene food packaging and all other disposable containers. The box is made of a mono-material, designed to make recycling processes easier.

It consists of a layered wall system. The outside is made of a food safe, high transparent, colour, odour, and taste neutral, chemical resistant, tough PPSU Plastic (BASF Ultrason). PPSU particle foam is sandwiched in the middle which is mainly used in transportation design and has great insulation properties. The different material properties allow, among others, to store hot and cold food and maintain their temperature. In addition, it can endure temperatures as low as -40 and +180 degrees, which allows it to be used in the fridge, freezer, oven, or microwave. The material supports a long lifespan and saves enormous amounts of resources, as it can be sterilised around 1000-1500 times before being recycled.

RE:ME can be developed into a wider system. The rectangular shape not only allows the most efficient use of volume, but also a wide range of food – from pasta to sushi, from burritos to soups. In addition, the concept can be thought further including different variations of boxes to include an even wider range of food varieties.

RE:ME promotes a single system for reusable food packaging in a city, state or country, that can be used by any type of restaurant and any type of food. This makes the system more consumer friendly and people are more likely to be encouraged to participate.

It is important to think differently about food, resources, materials and systems and use them in the most efficient way to create environmental changes for the future.

Recystis

by

Honorable Mention

Recystis

Micaela Dazzarola

Design Faculty at the Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile
Previous
Next

“If just 2% of the Ocean were to be sustainably farmed, the world could easily be fed” (UN, 2021). Kelp forests (in particular, Macrosystis Pirifera) have a great potential in achieving zero-hunger goal and on climate change mitigation. Both problems have increased throughout the world and over the years (IPCC, 2021) causing several problems such as the loss of biodiversity (WWF, 2020) and others such as food insecurity and hunger (FAO, 2021). Given the connection between both problems, it is necessary to propose a solution to both problems.

Kelp forest have multiple environmental (i.e., sustaining trophic networks), social (i.e., regeneration of marine habitat), and economic (i.e., generate direct use value) benefits. Also, kelp forests could provide enough protein to feed a world population of 12 billion people (UN, 2021). Despite being a potential natural agent to achieve the zero-hunger goal and to mitigate the effects of climate change, they are disappearing due to the increasing and accelerated deforestation of their forests – until being considered an overexploited specie – by humans (Rogers-Bennett and Catton,2019).

To face this problem, governments regulate the extraction and encourages the extraction through aquaculture (however it doesn’t encourage a responsible production/consumption, which could unbalance the marine ecosystem). Although these measures seek to limit the extraction from natural sources, there are no direct measures to promote and accelerate their regeneration capacity. The latter is essential for the natural preservation of these forests because the level of exploitation of kelp forest has reached a level that its regeneration capacity isn´t self-sufficient (i.e., has reached a tipping point).

“Recystis” intends to accelerate the reforestation of kelp forests (in particular, deforested wild forests) through a floating and transportable light module by altering (i.e., extending and standardizing) their photoperiod – promoting its growth and reproduction rates – under the implementation of underwater artificial light.

The primary users of “Recystis” will be the fishing communities because they depend economically, socially, and environmentally on fishing resources. Also, research centers (i.e., organizations and foundations) that participate in the study of kelp forests, can be considered a secondary user, as they analyze the population and development of kelp forests.

The research and development of “Recystis” was based on quantitative methods – scientific articles, data, and interviews with marines and biologists – to analyze the role of the light in their reforestation and regeneration process, as well as qualitative and structural aspects for the structure of the module. The results of this research – based on quantitative simulations – show that through “Recystis” is possible to duplicate the rate of growth and reproduction of kelp forest, reforesting them in a period between 3 to 8 weeks of application (depending on their initial state).

“Recystis” aims to preserve the marine ecosystem through the conservation of kelp forests as they provide shelter, food and settlement for species from different areas due to their global coverage. Additionally, it promotes responsible local fishing with positive environmental impact globally and in coastal communities. Both are relevant to achieve the zero-hunger goal.

RUBIX

by

Honorable Mention

RUBIX

Desiree Gonzales, Elif Nur Cicek, Han Xiao

Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Previous
Next

The Problem

RUBIX addresses the worldwide problem of food waste along with the issue of single-use packaging in the food takeaway sector.

Designing for who?

We designed for the following existing food waste systems and services:

  • Too Good to Go and Copia to create a food saving eco-system.
  • Copia collects food from major events such as weddings, office parties etc. and donates the food to homeless shelters.
  • Too Good to Go offers fresh food from restaurants, bakeries, cafes at the end of the day to be sold to users at a discounted price. Both systems tackle food waste and with RUBIX packaging we are able to tackle the connected issue of packaging within the takeaway system.

Research Process

Our research process include the following service design tools: rigorous benchmarking of case studies in the following sectors: service design, packaging and systemic design, creating an eco-system map of those case studies, researching food waste systems and food packaging systems. We interviewed food delivery couriers, restaurant owners, users who order delivery and using our quantitative and qualitative research to create RUBIX.

Ideation

After the research phase, we created personas, the before customer journey from our user interviews to assess user needs and to answer the user needs in the after customer journey. We entered the ideation phase where we created multiple rapid prototypes, iterations and prototypes. To get to our final prototype we facilitated multiple user surveys and took the feedback to iterate our prototype and to create the final prototype of RUBIX.

Intended Impact

Since RUBIX offers a divers morphological experience, the intended impact of RUBIX is to encourage users in a playful way to FINISH their food, to COMPOST the used packaging and to RE-USE the cell carrier, giving it a second life for the future.

We understand that the problem of food waste as well as recycling is a worldwide issue and that can’t be solved overnight, but we hope that with RUBIX we are able to take on a different approach to tackling the problem, a playful process that stimulates the motor functions of users of all ages, to finally complete the rubic cube without so much struggle.

So, come play with RUBIX.

SAGE HAUS

by

Honorable Mention

SAGE HAUS

Nawal Bte Azhar

Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore
Previous
Next

The Covid-19 global public health crisis has affected both humans and the environment. For instance, the significant changes in our daily lives caused by the pandemic has changed our way of living and compromised our health and overall well being.

Living in a small country like Singapore has made me more aware of how susceptible the country could be to a new outbreak or crisis. Moreover, due to the country’s land scarcity, food farms occupy about 1% of the total land use; hence we rely heavily on food imports from overseas countries to meet consumers’ demands and for the country’s food safety and security.

Therefore, we need to readily help Singapore by introducing more locally produced foods which would reduce its dependence on other countries. Also ensure that the country’s food farms are used productively and sustainably.

To aid in this process, I would like to introduce “Sage Haus”, a green design project aiming to achieve sustainable development in the long run. Located in Singapore at 26 Dempsey road, it holds historical significance, and it was once a nutmeg plantation before an outbreak of a disease that caused the whole operation to cease. This is similar to how the pandemic has disrupted our food supply chains, threatening the country’s food safety and security. The site has also provided me with the perfect opportunity to envision the future potential of this project through adaptive reuse, a sustainable way of conserving an architectural building that aims to retain its heritage and history even as it continues to serve other purposes.

After careful research and planning, I intend on incorporating the three core factors of sustainable development (Environment, Economic and Social) aspects into my proposed layout programs. These spaces are thoughtfully proposed to accommodate the environment, people, and the community.

This is how I intended for the three factors of sustainable development to be integrated:

Environment

An urban farming space allows food plantations to be grown indoors and vertically. The vertical farm is a creative way of adding productivity in smaller areas but still providing reliable and consistent harvests.

These farms are a way of tackling our country’s limited land issues for food production. It also acts as a foundation of the year-round output to stabilize our food supply chain, thus, reducing dependence on overseas imports.

Economy

The next space is the cafe. This particular cafe works alongside the existing urban farm, thus creating a farm-to-table concept. Ingredients are locally and freshly sourced. This will emphasize the importance of sustainable food production to customers.

Social

Thirdly, Exhibition and workshops. Hands-on enrichment programs to promote educational and environmental awareness.

In conclusion, the global pandemic has impacted a vast area of our lives. Threatened to halt the world from advancing to greater sustainability. Therefore, It is crucial for us as individuals and communities to take action in any way we can. Re-designing our systems to be sustainable and resilient for the well being of our future generations and environment is just one of many.

SGDIRECT Convenience Store

by

Honorable Mention

SGDIRECT Convenience Store

Elin Koh

Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore
Previous
Next

Singapore has put a 30 by 30 vision, whereby 30% of Singapore’s nutritional needs will be produced locally by 2030. It is an ambitious goal that Singapore has been working towards since 2019. Are we even close to that number today? Singapore currently imports over 90% of its food supply from over 170 countries, making it especially sensitive to any changes in the global agricultural landscape. The COVID-19 pandemic has proven to be a wake-up call for Singapore on how fragile food security can be.

Initiatives have been established to promote the development of agriculture locally, such as converting more spaces for urban farming and setting up certified courses in the related field. Despite the current solutions, does it directly translate to the actual consumption of local produce? We might be producing 30% of local food items, but it does not mean that Singaporeans will be actively sourcing for them. While 94% of respondents in a survey were willing to buy local produce, only 65% could identify local produce when shopping for their groceries, suggesting that consumers do not focus mainly on the title of buying local but other factors like price points and quality.

Ultimately, the research has concluded that Singaporeans have yet to support local produce because it is either not easily accessible or that they are unaware of the current initiatives. This project aims to target Singaporean Working Adults to take awareness of the 30 by 30 goal and provide them an opportunity to support Singapore’s local farms through this one-stop solution. SGDIRECT’s advanced technology only requires consumers to download the app that contains a unique QR code to enter and leave the store. After registering a credit card or linking it to DBS PayNow or PayLah, consumers can now grab, bag, and go without the need to checkout. The store can track every customer’s purchases by detecting what they take out from the racks until they scan out of the store. We house all sorts of groceries, from snacks to raw food primarily made in Singapore, assuring our promise of no imports.

With the growing influence of technology, we believe that we can showcase the future of convenience retail and stand out as a reliable and humble brand for Singaporeans to source their daily fresh groceries.

TANTE EMMA

by

Honorable Mention

TANTE EMMA

Emma Johann

Universität der Künste, Germany
Previous
Next

“There are about eight billion humans on this planet today, and the world’s population is growing at an ever-increasing rate. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations FAO predicts that by 2050 there will probably be 10 billion humans on earth. Food cultures, especially those of the western world, are changing only slowly. Meat and fish as a nutritious source of protein are deeply embedded in us. We speak of habits, customs, perhaps even tradition. Nowadays, the question arises as to what we will use to substitute the meat and fish in our diet, which also conforms with our newly heightened standards for sustainability and ecological balance.

For some time now, we humans have known exactly what we are doing to the animals and our planet through the mass animal husbandry celebrated in our current western food culture. Two billion people, however, have already integrated insects into their diet. Because they come with nutritious and sustainable advantages. Insects can convert nutrients better and are very rich in protein. For example, twelve times less feed is needed for one kilogram of edible crickets than for one kilogram of beef. The water requirement for a kilogram of crickets is also much lower at 2,500 litres compared to beef at 22,000 litres. In addition, the edible portion of most insect species is 80 per cent, compared to only about 40 per cent for beef. Insects also take up ten times less space than beef and reproduce extremely rapidly in comparison. But it is not only the ecological balance of insects that is convincing; the nutritional values in particular stand out. Some grasshoppers contain more than twice as much protein as beef or chicken. As protein suppliers, insects even surpass nuts, legumes and cereals.

The FAO expects insects to play a significantly important role in feeding the world’s population in the future.

There are about 2000 species of insects that would be suitable for human consumption. 2000 fully-fledged alternatives our planet is offering us.

We simply can’t hold on to our current food culture any longer. The circumstances of the world we live in are constantly changing. And it does so incessantly. Don’t we want to create change? Be the change? With TANTE EMMA I want to shed a light onto a more sustainable and nutritious food culture. I want to encourage active engagement between project and viewer, and the systems in which they exist. TANTE EMMA deliberately provokes a future food culture to make a statement. It makes it visible and discussable. It aims to provoke change.

The Fresh Exhibit Kitchen

by

Honorable Mention

The Fresh Exhibit Kitchen

Maísa Neves Pimenta

IADE – Universidade Europeia, Portugal
Previous
Next

“According to compelling statistics, the problem of food waste requires urgent actions at the consumer level. Our project is the result of a Master’s degree dissertation that sought to answer the question “How can the design of domestic kitchens help the user to decrease his food waste?”.

The factors related to food waste on a domestic scale are very diverse, which implies a considerably challenging scenario. They are related both to internal causes, such as the kitchen structure and the food storage conditions, and to external causes, such as the existing commercial infrastructure, and socio-cultural factors that directly influence the families’ eating routines.

We understand that the kitchen is part of the users’ everyday lives, whose design can include innovative features. For years, parameters have been established to guarantee the comfort and efficiency of the kitchen as a “”laboratory”” of domestic life. We consider it necessary to update them considering the contemporary dynamics of everyday life and to challenge the status quo in order to create more responsible food handling practices.

We have selected a set of strategies that guide professionals in the creation of innovative design projects for sustainable behaviour change. This was done through extensive literature review and reference analysis. These strategies involve the provision of information to the consumer, encouraging responsible choices, directing behaviour by creating constraints and stimuli, using technology for innovation and for intelligent design that steers the user.

The Fresh Exhibit Kitchen realizes in practice the theoretical conclusions reached at this dissertation. The proposed kitchen design shows how our guidelines can be applied in a simple way and with technology available on the market.

For instance, the storage space for the most perishable foods (those which need the greatest attention from the user) is located in the kitchen’s central area, so to have maximum visibility and to be close to the sink. We have selected this space to implement a rail system in which modular trays always run from left to right. It also helps family communication by establishing a routine in which new items always enter on the left and runs to the right as the time to be eaten approaches.

Non-perishable foods, as well as those foods that need to be protected from light (e.g., onions, potatoes), were placed in cabinets that can be seen whenever users need to reach utensils or dishware.

Also, we have considered the creation of spaces with different conditions (lighting, ventilation, humidity, etc.) for the food groups. To assist the user, we have developed a communication system to guide users so to storage each food according to its needs. This system is composed of graphic symbols and different materials (white for the domestic utensils and raw wood for food).
Our project was conceived to be applied on a minimal space. We believe that it can be adapted to different scenarios and our guidelines work as a source of inspiration and support for innovative ideas to reduce food waste at the consumer level.

The New Norwegian Food Culture

by

Honorable Mention

The New Norwegian Food Culture

Eileen Olsen, Håvard Moseng, Hanne Lockertsen, Eline Mikhela, Ema Imbrasaite

AHO, Norway
Previous
Next

Norway in its geology and geography is unsuitable for agriculture, and we end up importing goods from foreign actors. Most of our imports are coffee, sugar, vegetables and meat, which leads to competition between local norwegian farms and foreign actors in the stores.This leads to local farms shutting down, overproduction, food waste, and methane emissions from transportation and food waste that gets sent to the landfills.

With this task we used system oriented design thinking, as our method to map out the supply chain in 2022 and how our future would look like in 2042. When we look at the whole system of symptoms, root problems, where they come from and what they lead to, we find these to be the main leverage points. These will be where we predict the most impact after a relatively small intervention.

The New Norwegian Culture

By mapping out our current situation and where it would lead us to, we saw potentials for a desirable future.Our desirable future is The New Norwegian Food culture. It’s a place where you can be social, learn about and practice different agricultural and cooking traditions, as well as share your personal and cultural relationship to food. It is a place for the curious and enthusiastic, the scientists or the chefs, beginners or masters. This solution will give us a bigger perspective and value our resources more.

After seeing the effect of the interventions we notice the world is a somewhat better place than before. The farmer has the time, resources and incentive to take great care of the earth and has finally the possibility to grow at a regeneratively pace and style. All farms are able to run, small and large.

Society has a different view on food and we cannot imagine a world where we would ever waste anything at all – especially not food. Because we know by heart what we should do, it is always easy to make the responsible decision, and it is as easy as never before.