Abstract
Eco-feedback aims at increasing awareness of resource use to encourage conservation. A growing area of concern in sustainable living is food waste, and many new institutional waste receptacles incorporate waste sorting and recycling instructions for waste management. However, little attention has been paid to the design of encouraging awareness of waste in the home, particularly at the point of food waste. We explored the design challenges and effectiveness of novel eco-feedback techniques at the point of food waste through an in-situ study in a university residence. Our E-COmate system captures and visualizes domestic food waste data for more readily comprehensible and accessible information within a home environment embedded in an existing waste bin. Four E-COmate smart bins were introduced, deployed and evaluated for 8 weeks at a student residence in Canada. The aim of the study was to see whether a system like E-COmate could impact food waste patterns and awareness, and if so, to what extent it engages consumers. To explore its impact, a mix of methods was adopted. Waste audits were conducted to explore waste changes. Retrospective interviews were carried out to gain insights in residences' reflections and motivations. We show that E-COmate had a positive impact on participants' awareness of and behavior toward their food waste. Participants who had E-COmate installed in their kitchens showed overall a significant decrease in food waste and in particular a decrease of almost 32% in edible or once edible food waste, and a 69% decrease in generated compost waste during the last 2 weeks compared to the first 2 baseline weeks. Furthermore, while our control group showed an increase of 244% of waste of starches and grains toward the last 2 weeks (i.e., the end of term) compared to the 2 baseline weeks, the intervention group only showed an increase of 4.5% in waste of grains and starches. Eco-feedback further engaged residences in reducing food waste practices starting at the grocery store (e.g., by buying in smaller portions). In sum, eco-feedback as provided by E-COmate had positive impacts on reducing food waste. These findings are a result of increased awareness, the constant presence and immediacy of E-COmate served as a reminder, and their understanding of how much they actually waste as a group. Their awareness was reflected in how they adapted their shopping behavior as one way to reduce waste at home.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 658898 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| Journal | Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems |
| Volume | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 10 May 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by the Victory in Europe Scholarship granted by The Irving K. Barber British Columbia Scholarship Society. This work was supported in part also by the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate in Interactive and Cognitive Environments (ICE), which was funded by the EACEA Agency of the European Commission under EMJD ICE FPA n 2010-0012. The funders were not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article or the decision to submit it for publication.
Funding Information:
We greatly thank Erik Pietersma and Geert van den Boomen from Eindhoven University of Technology for developing the bin-scale system. We thank Rachel Telling and her team at the Simon-Fraser University?Sustainability Office for the collaboration and support throughout the study. We are also grateful to all janitors and students for the accessibility and invaluable feedback. To protect participants' privacy, all names in this article are pseudonyms. This article contains content derived from the first author's dissertation (Lim, 2017). Funding. This work was supported by the Victory in Europe Scholarship granted by The Irving K. Barber British Columbia Scholarship Society. This work was supported in part also by the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate in Interactive and Cognitive Environments (ICE), which was funded by the EACEA Agency of the European Commission under EMJD ICE FPA n 2010-0012. The funders were not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article or the decision to submit it for publication.
Keywords
- deployment
- E-COmate
- eco-feedback
- food sustainability
- food waste
- mixed methods
- observation study
- persuasive design