Food Waste Hero is a project to raise awareness of food waste and initiate change through behavioural economics, storytelling, design and technology. It features a Raspberry Pi internet-of-things device to weigh kitchen food waste bins and show how households are doing compared to the UK average. This presentation was given to NIAB (National Institute of Agricultural Botany) in June 2013 in Cambridge UK.

1. Food Waste Hero
Antony Quinn
11 June 2013

2. Introductions
Hello!
Interaction design: human behaviour, emotions
and experiences.

3. Summary
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6.
7.
Understand
Design
Build
Demo
Future Work
Acknowledgements
Q&A

4. Summary
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3.
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6.
7.
Understand
Design
Build
Demo
Future Work
Acknowledgements
Q&A

5. Food Waste in the UK

6. Nearly a fifth is avoidable

7. Why?

8. 70kg per person per year

9. Direct costs...

10. ... and indirect costs
● Financial
○ Electricity: fridge/freezer
○ Petrol: supermarket
○ Council tax: refuse collection
● Environmental
○ Pollution (air, water, land): agriculture, processing,
transport, retail, disposal
○ Biodiversity: land use
● Social
○ Food security: imports
○ Malnourishment: higher prices and opportunity costs

11. Lack of awareness
"We don’t realise how much we
throw away. Even householders who
are adamant that their household
wastes no food at all are throwing away
88kg of avoidable food a year."

12. A familiar story
But I don't like crusts!
Hmm...
USE BY:
11-JUN-13
Eugh! Mouldy potatoes!

13. An unfamiliar story...

14. The Rise and Fall
of
Billy the Banana

21. 15,000 bananas just like Billy are thrown
away by UK families every day.
Please...
THINK BEFORE YOU THROW

22. Summary
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3.
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6.
7.
Understand
Design
Build
Demo
Future Work
Acknowledgements
Q&A

23. Making the unremarkable remarkable
the humble bin
the humble scales
awareness

25. Behaviour change
"Behavioral economics ... studies the effects of social, cognitive, and emotional factors on the economic
decisions of individuals and institutions". [Source: Wikipedia]

26. We are influenced by:
Messenger - who tells us
Incentives - rules-of-thumb
Norms - what others do
Defaults - go with the flow
Salience - what's novel & relevant
Priming - subconscious cues
Affect - emotional associations
Commitment - public promises
Ego - feeling good about ourself

27. Design
"Today one the leading-edge areas in which
design can influence behaviour change is in
relation to safeguarding the environment ...
giving home-owners immediate and
understandable visual feedback".
Jeremy Myerson, Helen Hamlyn Professor of
Design, Royal College of Art
[Source: MINDSPACE 02 March 2010]

28. We are influenced by:
Messenger Incentives
Norms - UK average
Defaults
Salience - twinkly lights
Priming
Affect - smiley faces
Commitment
Ego

29. Waste separation

30. Maths
Use a simple number to tell a complex story of
global economics, politics and human values:
if > 0 : wasting more than per capita average
Notes:
● 0.61 = 61% ["most of the food we throw away (4.1 million tonnes or 61%) is avoidable"]
● 192 = 70,000g / 365 = 192 grammes ["on average, every one of us throws away 70kg of
avoidable food a year"]

32. Summary
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2.
3.
4.
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6.
7.
Understand
Design
Build
Demo
Future Work
Acknowledgements
Q&A

33. Google Spreadsheet

34. Information visualisation

35. Version 1: Arduino

36. Version 2: Raspberry Pi
●
●
●
●
UK schools
Python
"Internet of things"
USB postal scales

37. Summary
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Understand
Design
Build
Demo
Future Work
Acknowledgements
Q&A

38. Demo
tinyurl.com/fwh-niab-2013

39. "Billy" take 2

40. Summary
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6.
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Understand
Design
Build
Demo
Future Work
Acknowledgements
Q&A

41. Potential Partners
● WRAP: Waste & Resources Action
Programme
● Ellen MacArthur Foundation: Circular
Economy
● Schools: storytelling, D&T, computer
science, art, biology, history ...etc
● Local government: Landfill Tax, pay-asyou-throw, national and international targets
● CSR: Tesco, M&S, Pret-a-Manger

42. Questions
● Purpose of food?
○
○
○
○
○
nutrition
social bonds ("quality time")
dieting
fads (superfoods/celebrity chefs)
5-a-day
● Not segmenting by number in household problem of the "mean" (report fig. 163)
● Simplify for schools: spreadsheet + kitchen
scales

43. Design challenges

44. Reality is messy

45. Summary
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Understand
Design
Build
Demo
Future Work
Acknowledgements
Q&A

46. Acknowledgements
MINDSPACE: Influencing behaviour through public policy - Paul Dolan,
Michael Hallsworth, David Halpern, Dominic King, Ivo Vlaev (02 March 2010)
http://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publications/mindspace
The Food We Waste
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/foodwewaste_fullreport08_05_08.
pdf
Updates: www.wrap.org.uk
Thank you David

47. Thank you!
antony@antonyquinn.co.uk
@antonyquinn