Waste?
Strategic Design Interventions
Team
Samantha Piercy
June Bascaran
Claudia Bertoletti
Seher Krishna
Josephine bourghardt
Role Lead Designer – Research, concept development, facilitation, prototyping, and visual storytelling
Exploring food waste not as a problem, but as a resource — through community meals, AI perception experiments, and bio-material design.Our goal: shift mindsets, build local collaborations, and spark regenerative practices where I led the design process, organized events, built partnerships, and translated findings into tangible outcomes.
A collaboration with Food Not Bombs Barcelona, and local restaurants to explore food waste as a resource. Key interventions included shared cooking events, AI-powered image analysis, and bio-material prototyping using kitchen scraps. We hosted public dinners, co-created compostable tableware, and launched an open-source platform with recipes, guides, and a local collaborator map. This project showed how design can reframe waste, build trust, and inspire community-led sustainability.
Actions to build trust & experiences to learn with and from others activities that explore difficult topics.
‘Materials on their own are not regenerative as such, but the way that we work with them and methods that we use can be regenerative.’ - Elsa Dagný Ásgeirsdóttir, Lead Creative Producer, SPACE10
Food is a fundamental aspect of human existence, serving as fuel, energy, and a connector of people. It plays a vital role in shaping identity, offering comfort, conveying status, and promoting healing.
The global urgency surrounding food is evident as food production contributes to over 25% of CO2 emissions, and inefficient agricultural practices deplete and contaminate 70% of fresh water annually. Consumer waste accounts for 42% of food wastage. In the context of exploitation, overconsumption, declining insect populations, animal welfare concerns, and obesity, the discussion around food encompasses its production, perceptions, consumption, and waste.