POST D LITREVIEW

Robertson, M. 2017, Sustainability Principles and Practice, Routledge, New York, pp.281-284.

Margaret Robertson (2017) in the book Sustainability Principles and Practice introduced the accessible and comprehensive overview of the interdisciplinary field of sustainability. In part II Issues and Solutions. She indicated the recycling coordination is a career path in sustainability field. The job is responsible for set up and monitor a recycling system and provide education or training to whatever organization that provided the job position. Under her consciousness and understanding of the job, she summarizes the job duties of recycling coordinating:

First thing she discussed was recording. Careful recordkeeping is an important part of coordinating a recycling program. To set up a program, evaluating existing conditions is the first work to do. The recycling coordinator normally prepare an indicator report to serve as standard against which future change can be evaluat. The examinations can in total solid waste quantity, present recycling rate, sorts and quantities of matters gathered for recycling, details about present recycling infrastructure.

The recycling coordinator also documents weight tickets and receipts and keeps a continuous log recording data from these records, which are followed times and compared against the recycling program’s stated goals .

She introduced the coordinators at sites such as colleges regularly do what is called a waste audit, a group exercise in which volunteers sort and measure segments of campus trash. It’s often eye-opening, and can provide a baseline for rework the university’s waste management.

Later, she conveys that recycling relies on the activities of peoples. One actions the coordinator should do is to make it as easy as possible for participating group (e.g. students) to recycle. Moreover, an effective program provides attractive facilities such as bins for recycling, in as many convenient locations as possible. And the recycling bins ought to be set up in ways that limit the danger of pollution with clear, unambiguous, and legible labels.

At the end of this excerpt, she indicated that One of the topics that repeats in the sustainability field is the necessity for communication. The people who use a system ought to be acknowledged and their voices to be listened. On the account of recycling, custodial staff to approach them how recycling works for them whether they have advice to improve recycling system.

I find the resource while doing the project. I found this book at the library with keywords about food waste management. I think the review is good for me to understand what are the duties of the core coordinator of the system. knowing what are the challenges of being a recycling coordinator is the best way to assist the person.

POST C: GROUP REFLECTION

We the group, Level Three, proposed to a panel of organic food waste specialist on Wednesday 7th June 2017 to make organic food waste transparent at University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) by looking at practices, education and promotion. We began our process by writing our own brief and deciding on the confines we wanted to stay within in the sense of our target market, geographic location, stakeholder and a point in the direction of what we wanted to design. This was all developed from a literature review, blackboard audit, survey, data collection and observations.

Brief

As a group you will have the opportunity to design and create a communication tool for students of The University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and related demographics including staff and businesses in and around the UTS Campus. This communication tool needs to cater to practices, education and promotion by showing transparency surrounding the issues of food waste at UTS.

Research needs to be undertaken to inform and raise awareness regarding the current food waste situation at UTS. Using the UTS Sustainable Development Goals as an initial starting point will assist beginning your process for showing transparency surrounding the issues of food waste at UTS. Primary and secondary methods such as data collection, mind maps, surveys, observation, user testing and literature review need to be undertaken carefully with precision to provide accurate data.

Your presentation of your UTS food waste communication tool is due Wednesday 7th June 2017. You will need to have the food waste tool finalised by Friday 2nd June 2017.

You are to approach the food waste problem at UTS in four separate areas:

• Food Waste Management
• Food Waste Communication
• Food Waste Education
• Food Waste Systems

The communication tool needs to be presented neatly and in a cohesive manner. Remember you’re designing mainly for students but also for UTS staff and businesses around the UTS campus.

Above is our brief. Initially we struggled to place the right confines on our brief from attempting to come up with the final design solution before going through the design process. The brief hits a couple of key points we decided to align ourselves and the goals we wanted to achieve to the UTS Sustainable Develop Goals. Another key point was sharing and communicating to the UTS community, mainly students about the benefits of organic food waste and what can do to make it transparent.

Survey Analysis

We conducted a survey on organic food waste at UTS aimed at students to see what they knew about the system and whether they wanted to know more. The questions we asked on Survey Monkey, an Internet survey platform made it easier and faster to collect the data.

The results from the survey, identified students don’t know much about the organic food waste system at UTS referring to the 26 out of 39 people in question one. However 37 out of 39 people said they would change their behaviour referring to question four, if they were provided facts and figures. The other insight made was 27 out of 39 people were willing to be part of a broader scheme of organic food waste even with a chance their efforts could be wasted.

Literature Review

We’ve conducted a literature review to further ground our research regarding the current standings of food waste. Looking at this matter from a bigger picture, we’ve divided our research into three sub topics regarding our main focus on food waste (transparency); transparency in everyday practices, education, and promotion. Transparency in everyday practices focuses on the habits and behaviours of humans that shapes the current state of food waste our society is at now. We focused on diving in deeper on how big of an impact of humans can make regarding food waste, and how important it is to know beyond the existing rules of waste distribution, rather concrete their understandings on the current state of food waste. Transparency in education focuses on the precise definition of food waste by being transparent about food waste, as a lack of understanding can result to ignorance. Transparency in promotion is a big part of food waste – our take on this topic was to be completely transparent about the numbers and statistics of the state of food waste right now, as well as goals for the future. This way, we were hoping to stimulate interest from society to take part in improving this matter.

This literature review helped us develop a concrete definition of transparency and food waste itself to move forward with our design ideas. We understand that education was a key point of this topic – as a result, we chose to focus on integrating an educational advertisement through promoting the importance of transparency regarding food waste, and how big of an impact humans can contribute to make a change.

Designs

The first design we created was poster based. We believe posters are always a necessary element to any advertising campaign due to their ability to intrigue passerby’s, contain all relevant details and maintain a prominence across the campus. Containing a different type of food on each, the vector is depicted at a low transparency to reinforce our transparent theme.

The second design constructed was a design that we decided on when walking the sidewalks of the university. “Food Prints” were formed as a concept that can be applied to the ground of all walking spaces on campus. Naturally looking down when walking, students, staff and visitors can walk on our food prints and at a glance, be reminded of the message we are attempting to convey to to UTS as a whole.

Conclusion

Our transparency communication tool has been developed from the results of the literature review, blackboard audit, organic food waste data collection, online survey and visual analysis. This has given us the evidence to design an appropriate answer to organic food waste not going to landfill but back into our gardens by means of compost from the machines in building 8 and 10.

Bibliography

•      Survey Monkey 2017, UTS Food Waste Survey, viewed 6 June 2017, < https://www.surveymonkey.com/summary/gwFHXL6rczeQP9E9VNEWgTxFGUNs8fkinNErZ3Fup4ibEuh3e_2FlxODLiQPZFPqX_2B&gt;.

Post B: Group Caddie Design Reflection

TEAM CHARTER

Members: Sabrina, Hollie, Georgina, Stuart, Johnny   

What are our ‘ground rules’?

• Consistency
• turning up on time
• communicating well through facebook, contributing on assignments, giving feedback and opinions
• Being vocal and voicing your opinions
• Going through assignments together before turning it in
• Complete assignments at / at least two days before due date

What will we do if a group member’s work doesn’t meet our standards?

• Speak up assertively
• Going about it in a respectful way (guidance, giving advice, offer help)

What are our goals? What are we trying to accomplish?

• To produce quality work in a cohesive environment

How are we going to make decisions?

• Consulting every member of the group
• Everyone gets to voice out their opinions and give feedbacks

What skills, strengths and weaknesses do we have within our group?

• Working well together along with good communication
• Need to be more attentive
• Keeping on top of dates
• Staying on par and informing each other on new information / readings, etc

We, the group named LEVEL THREES

agree with this charter and will try our best to uphold it.

 

Reflection:

How can different design disciplines contribute to organic waste solutions?

According to Tatiana Pages a designer who worked on interdisciplinary design. The interdisciplinary design means looking at many types and disciplines at one time, and looking at the project beyond its category and using intersections. In our design, we looked at aesthetic, human behaviour, educations, environment etc. That requires people with different way to see the world. Which is why we are needing people from different disciplines. We all have different way of thinking as an individual, and by studying different course, it shaped out way of thinking even further. Designers are exist to make life solution. By when facing big problem like organic waste, we need to consider more. Like product designers are focus on functionality and visual communicators are focus on the visual approach to the audience. Each have different characteristics and advantage.

Why is it important to include designers in the management of organic waste? What contribution does design make to thinking about systems? to changing systems? to inventing systems?

Designers are important. Designer have understanding of design thinking, which not only work with designing visual works but also work with things like a system. Besides, designer have the sense of make visual attraction to the system. The system is involving with people and it’s interactive, visual language and product practicability became very important. Designer knows the best approaches of visual communication, and how to shape the product and procedure, due to the daily practice as a designer. Also, designer is irreplaceable, because visualisation is a big component of the system and nobody does better than a visual designer (generally includes different disciplines).

 

 

Reference:

Petrovic, K. (2017). The Interdisciplinary Design Approach – HOW Design. [online] HOW Design. Available at: http://www.howdesign.com/design-firm/the-interdisciplinary-design-approach/ [Accessed 10 May 2017].

POST A: WASTE OF A DAY

Food waste is the first thing came into my mind when thinking about organic waste, the involuntary answers show how unaware people has been and how common the issue had become.  It is a general fact that Australians discard up to 1/5 of food they buy(lunchalot, 2017), the situation could be worse in my family. Thus, I recorded the daily food waste of mine and how do I discard the waste as a sample to examine.

My Organic Waste Audit

Breakfast Organic Waste

Lunch Organic Waste

Dinner Organic Waste

(Move mouse to see description)

I start my day with a pear, a pack of biscuits and a glass of water, sometimes there is a pair of wild cockatiels shows up on my balcony, the fruit cores will end up in their stomach, but the day I just throw it into the bin. For lunch, I have McDonald’s fast food. I am a fan of McD’s though I know it is terribly bad for my health and I produced waste from the paper packaging. For dinner, I live with my family and we buy fresh ingredients basically every day because my family does not like dining out and the grocery and butcher are just two minutes’ walk.  I ended up having a sumptuous meal that day, which happens twice a week when my family friends pay visits. The organic waste from a meal like that is tremendous. It is composed of spices, bones, vegetable leftovers (The parts we do not eat because of the mouthfeel) and water. The residue of Chinese food is greasy and strong-smelling. As appendage, I normally use two plastic bags to dispose the waste of the general waste because I cannot take the risk of having any sauce and oil dropped on my carpet. Imagine it is just a tiny part of the overall 4,000,000 tons of national food waste (Foodwise, 2017), and yet I didn’t do anything about it. *It would be great to have a compost system but then it’s just not compatible with an apartment.

One Day Food Waste Audit 

 

Conclusion

I discovered the problems is relevant to my cultural background and the urbanized lifestyle. My Chinese family background has a huge effect of how we treat our guests and how we cook. In particular, we use strong taste spices and sauce which are edible but not one is going to eat it because they are not considered as food and having an extremely strong taste. They eventually end up discarded in rubbish bin because many of them cannot be stored or reuse for the second time. There is also a large consumption of oil according to Chinese taste. The urbanized lifestyle is one of the curses to the organic waste. Dinner is the only meal in a day that people can spend time and vitality on, which I’ve already provided a sample as a result. The problem is not on wasting the eatable food, but spending too many ingredients for each meal. 

What should I do

What is bad about living with family is you sort of lose control of what you eat, and the serving size for the family will be much unpredictable to the cook. Therefore, I must sit down with my family and have a serious discussion about dinner. I can begin with reducing the total amount of food, and stepwise adapt the healthier foods. And think of a good use of the vegetable parts we considered inedible, do not let any food sent to the landfill if there is any way to use it. It’s important to know what tradition is contrary to the modern concept and ameliorate it if possible.

 

Book Launch Canapé

I wonder where the dip goes after all vegetables are served because every time they replaced a new canapé with unserved dipping sauce. 

Reference List

lunchalot, 2017, Do something about food waste – Australian Food Wastage Stats from lunchalot.com 2017, lunchalot. viewed 4 April 2017, <http://www.lunchalot.com/foodwaste.php&gt;.

Foodwise, 2017, Food Waste Fast Facts 2017, Foodwise. viewed 2 April 2017, <http://www.foodwise.com.au/foodwaste/food-waste-fast-facts/&gt;.