Our team considered looking into preserving food for longer periods of time for our approach to reducing wasted food. If food lasts longer, people can preserve it to be consumed at a later time rather than throwing it away and buying more. One of the reasons people waste food is because they bought more than they could eat before the expiration date, and it ends up soiling and in the trash. If we can find a way to extend the longevity of our food, we will notice less food being wasted, which translates to less food waste in our landfills being burned and reducing methane gas emissions. Less gas emissions, as you know, improves the air quality, limiting chances of air quality induced asthma attacks.
What our Solution should be:
Analyzing the successes and downfalls of previous and current attempts to limit wasted food, helps my team set parameters and constraints for our project.
Looking at the failed attempt in Europe to limit wasted food by throwaway plastics, one of the things we have to look out for is the longevity of our solution and what happens after it’s done being used. We don’t want a solution that will be thrown away after every use, because that is using up a lot of resources. We have to think about the afterlife of the material we use. If it will be recyclable, or if it will be thrown away and burned in a landfill, what gas will be released. It’s ideal to use a material that is recyclable, but that material has to effectively do the job, and remain at an affordable price. Certain materials would be costly to produce in large quantities, making the market price high, and we need to make sure our solution is affordable. If we choose to do a tangible solution sent out to either people or stores, material is a huge parameter to keep in mind. We don’t want to make the same mistake as Europe and come up with a solution that harms the environment while trying to help.
We must keep in mind the effects of transportation. Ambrosia did an excellent job of accounting for the gases released by the trucks they used in production. When they gathered waste from landfills close to where it’s made, it limited the amount of CO2 being released into the atmosphere. If the trucks were originally traveling 5 miles to outside landfills, but instead only travel 1 miles away to a local landfill, they reduced the carbon footprint by 80% just on picking up the waste. Whatever our solution is, we have to keep an eye out for transportation to ensure that we aren’t limiting methane gas, but adding to CO2 emissions. CO2 is also a strong trigger for asthma.
Looking at the failed attempt in Europe to limit wasted food by throwaway plastics, one of the things we have to look out for is the longevity of our solution and what happens after it’s done being used. We don’t want a solution that will be thrown away after every use, because that is using up a lot of resources. We have to think about the afterlife of the material we use. If it will be recyclable, or if it will be thrown away and burned in a landfill, what gas will be released. It’s ideal to use a material that is recyclable, but that material has to effectively do the job, and remain at an affordable price. Certain materials would be costly to produce in large quantities, making the market price high, and we need to make sure our solution is affordable. If we choose to do a tangible solution sent out to either people or stores, material is a huge parameter to keep in mind. We don’t want to make the same mistake as Europe and come up with a solution that harms the environment while trying to help.
We must keep in mind the effects of transportation. Ambrosia did an excellent job of accounting for the gases released by the trucks they used in production. When they gathered waste from landfills close to where it’s made, it limited the amount of CO2 being released into the atmosphere. If the trucks were originally traveling 5 miles to outside landfills, but instead only travel 1 miles away to a local landfill, they reduced the carbon footprint by 80% just on picking up the waste. Whatever our solution is, we have to keep an eye out for transportation to ensure that we aren’t limiting methane gas, but adding to CO2 emissions. CO2 is also a strong trigger for asthma.
Goals, Parameters, & Constraints
Our goal for our design is to create a product that can ultimately decrease the amount of food being wasted. Our design needs to be effective and sustainable in order for our product to actually be productive. We want to produce something that can improve somebody’s life, not make it harder. Therefore, our product has to be easy to use and easily accessible. As well as not too expensive or people won’t even be interested. If our product can give fresh food a longer lifespan, then restaurants or people at home will have more time to eat that food rather than it going bad then being thrown away. Primarily, our goal is to improve someone's life with better living conditions.
The design parameters are budget, cost, materials, risk and design. We have to figure out a budget for creating this solution to our issue that is realistic and attainable. The cost of our final solution needs to be affordable for our target customers and the cost should not exceed the money wasted from buying excess food. We need to figure out what materials we will need; furthermore which will work best for their cost, which will be the best for our specific situation, and which one will not contribute to gas pollution as our overall goal is to decrease the production of gas pollution. We must account for risk and make sure to be ready for the risk involved in taking a certain avenue in our design. Our design is another parameter and we need to make sure our design is effective and sustainable. Most importantly our design needs to be able to have the power to improve somebody’s life through better living conditions as that is our entire goal. Our design must be affordable, safe, and actually work without too much effort putting into trying to figure out how to work it. On top of that, our design must be made out of materials that don’t contribute to climate change or produce methane because that would be contradictory to our entire solution as our initial problem is to limit food waste because of the carbon footprint it produces by releasing methane. We must be able to take risks despite all that is getting put into this because taking risks will get us out of our comfort zone and when taken out of our comfort zone we can produce more ideas or even a brand new concept that we wouldn’t have come up with without getting out of our comfort zone.
Our design constraints include completion date, budget, resources, prior knowledge, design principles, laws and regulations, performance requirements, manpower, and pollution production. We must put out our design and completed solution on a certain day, that day happens to be less than a year away. We have less than a year to complete our solution, therefore time or completion date is a constraint. As high schoolers we do not have much money, let alone enough money to pay for an extremely high tech and perfectly crafted design, therefore we will have to find other ways to access our materials. Another effect of being in high school is that we don’t have as many resources as say a construction company or professional engineering team, as a result we will have to make do with what we collect for materials and be extremely resourceful taking into account our surroundings. We all only have knowledge engineering for two years or less therefore we will have to research more and put in more effort to understand certain aspects of the whole design process. There are principles of design that our team has restricted ourselves to allow for our solution to follow our goals and ethics. We also have to take into account laws and regulations because our solution must not violate any to avoid termination of our project, but if it does we will not be able to actually put it into use and as a result all of our hard work will go down the drain. Our group will collectively decide performance requirements that our design must meet or else we will call it unproductive, despite these requirements being constraints, they will help motivate us to create our design to its full potential. Our team has a lack of manpower because we only have a team of three students which will limit our ability to quickly get things done that are parts of the design process and it limits our ability to consider more options or ideas that we couldn’t have thought of just between the three of us. Lastly and most importantly, our design must not contribute to pollution because if we make an effective design that prevents wasted food from contributing to methane pollution, but produces other types of gas pollution, that will deem our entire solution as counterproductive.
The design parameters are budget, cost, materials, risk and design. We have to figure out a budget for creating this solution to our issue that is realistic and attainable. The cost of our final solution needs to be affordable for our target customers and the cost should not exceed the money wasted from buying excess food. We need to figure out what materials we will need; furthermore which will work best for their cost, which will be the best for our specific situation, and which one will not contribute to gas pollution as our overall goal is to decrease the production of gas pollution. We must account for risk and make sure to be ready for the risk involved in taking a certain avenue in our design. Our design is another parameter and we need to make sure our design is effective and sustainable. Most importantly our design needs to be able to have the power to improve somebody’s life through better living conditions as that is our entire goal. Our design must be affordable, safe, and actually work without too much effort putting into trying to figure out how to work it. On top of that, our design must be made out of materials that don’t contribute to climate change or produce methane because that would be contradictory to our entire solution as our initial problem is to limit food waste because of the carbon footprint it produces by releasing methane. We must be able to take risks despite all that is getting put into this because taking risks will get us out of our comfort zone and when taken out of our comfort zone we can produce more ideas or even a brand new concept that we wouldn’t have come up with without getting out of our comfort zone.
Our design constraints include completion date, budget, resources, prior knowledge, design principles, laws and regulations, performance requirements, manpower, and pollution production. We must put out our design and completed solution on a certain day, that day happens to be less than a year away. We have less than a year to complete our solution, therefore time or completion date is a constraint. As high schoolers we do not have much money, let alone enough money to pay for an extremely high tech and perfectly crafted design, therefore we will have to find other ways to access our materials. Another effect of being in high school is that we don’t have as many resources as say a construction company or professional engineering team, as a result we will have to make do with what we collect for materials and be extremely resourceful taking into account our surroundings. We all only have knowledge engineering for two years or less therefore we will have to research more and put in more effort to understand certain aspects of the whole design process. There are principles of design that our team has restricted ourselves to allow for our solution to follow our goals and ethics. We also have to take into account laws and regulations because our solution must not violate any to avoid termination of our project, but if it does we will not be able to actually put it into use and as a result all of our hard work will go down the drain. Our group will collectively decide performance requirements that our design must meet or else we will call it unproductive, despite these requirements being constraints, they will help motivate us to create our design to its full potential. Our team has a lack of manpower because we only have a team of three students which will limit our ability to quickly get things done that are parts of the design process and it limits our ability to consider more options or ideas that we couldn’t have thought of just between the three of us. Lastly and most importantly, our design must not contribute to pollution because if we make an effective design that prevents wasted food from contributing to methane pollution, but produces other types of gas pollution, that will deem our entire solution as counterproductive.
What we can Improve:
To improve our goals, parameters, and constraints and to be ready for the next step in this project, my group needs to gather quantitative measures in which we can determine if our solution is successful. Thus far, we have had trouble to come up with these measurements because we are still beginners and don't know exactly what we can do / expect yet. We are still learning as we go and trying to decipher how to prepare our measurable in a rational/attainable way. First of all, We need to find a percentage of what food waste we want to decrease. To do this we need to find what is attainable and what percentage of decrease is rational. We need to go back and analyze what research we have to see what percentage of wasted food contributes to air pollution, and then how far we want to decrease that number. We need to deliver measurable goals. We also need to decide if we want to decrease the actual waste at the landfill, prevent food from being wasted at the source (restaurants or home), or find another way to prevent the harmful gases. To answer these questions we are going to come together as a group and brainstorm together to decide these measurements and goals.