wise box

There are several problems with fridges of nowadays, where the user starts wasting food. Food waste is a global problem from every point of view. It causes 13 billion euros per year in Italy, 45% at the consumer level in households, so every Italian throws out 76 kilos of food per year. The most common food waste causes are due to too much preparation, too much grocery, forgotten food in the fridge, a lack of visibility in the fridge, a wrong use of the storage due to less education and no right place for leftovers. Almost two thirds of consumers are aware that they are wasting food themselves. They say that there is a particular need for better information about food storage.

With my fridge I want to restart the way we store our food, to reduce food waste and to get a better relation with food through an educational and natural design. I want to transform the process the user does after buying food.

The fridge consists of modules which can be bought separated and also placed separated, it‘s not anymore the “whole“ of a fridge. The main program of action isn‘t changing, the food still gets conserved by cooling, but it has some additional features which we might call sub-programs of action. Instead of one cooling “box“ the fridge has now four different conservation modules, with different kinds of cooling and other conserving methods. The modules are smaller so that the user has more control about what‘s inside. The user now has to decide first which is the right container for the different types of food. This moment of staying in front of the storage and really thinking about the foods properties to store it best. By looking the user should be able to tell where the different types of food have to be stored. The system provides a physical representation that can be directly perceived and that is directly interpretable in terms of the intentions and expectations of the person. The user gets constrained through the forms and the materials which are rhymes to the food. The user is not able anymore to put the food without thinking in the “big white box“, but is now forced to divide the food due to their properties and put it to the right container with the right conservation properties so the food holds longer. In addition, each module has a secondary and non-visible at first sight indication on the opening with icons, so the user, in case of troubles, gets a confirmation that the food has been placed right. Each module is already provided with the right temperature, so the user is not able to install it in the wrong way. Also, the opening mechanism changed. The user is hardly able to open all the modules at the same time. Therefore, the doors can not be left open and the cold air can not escape and consume more energy for re-cooling.

Of course some might say that this fridge also ables the user to store the products wrong, but it is the user who wants to change something and minimize their footprint.