Recipes for Waste-Tooling: Using Food Waste in Design

Abstract

In this research, we propose an alternate consumption cycle in which the traditional landfill waste disposal model is averted by developing design objects that are fabricated with household biowaste materials. Food decomposition in landfills not only wastes the energy and emissions input into the original production process, but also releases methane. By rerouting this waste for secondary use as novel design objects and tools, in this research we seek to prevent some amounts of household biowaste from reaching landfills. This process, that we call waste-tooling, repurposes food waste to make kitchen tools by employing different fabrication strategies.