PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Each year in the U.S. more than $200 billion worth of food is lost or wasted. Roughly 30 - 40% of all food in this country is not eaten, more than any nation in the world. This is a large social, environmental, and economic problem.

• The social problem is that 54 million Americans, including 18 million children, suffer from food insecurity. Charities addressing hunger are unable to meet the food demand, which grew significantly from pre-pandemic levels. The amount of food thrown away each year would provide 130 billion meals.
• The environmental problem is that food waste constitutes the largest portion of landfills, where it generates high levels of greenhouse gas that are toxic and contribute to global warming. If food in landfills were a country unto itself, it would be the third largest producer of emissions, behind China and the U.S. The economic problem in that, along with the food that goes uneaten, all of the land, water, fertilizer, feed, transport, human labor, and other resources that went into growing, making, distributing, storing, preparing, and packaging the unconsumed food is lost. At a time when food prices have jumped 11% in a year, the largest 12-month rise since 1980, costs from food wastage contributes to inflation.

The team will develop an innovation to lower food loss and/or waste[1] in the U.S. by using the process taught in this course. Select an operating business, nonprofit, or government entity in North Carolina that would introduce your innovation into one or more parts of the farm to fork food chain: food farms food processors and manufacturers food distributors and retailers food consumers. Restaurants and grocery stores are distributors/retailers. Name specific organization and which part or parts of the food chain the innovation targets to reduce food loss/waste.

Critically, the innovation must meet the two-fold criteria that it is 1) novel (not done before) and 2) practical (can be implemented). The innovation should be new product, service, process, system, or a combination.

Project Overview

Team will apply the human flourishing innovation (HFI) approach to develop the innovation. This approach involves cultivating and applying generative human capacities to the three-phase design thinking process of discover, design, and deliver. Along the way your team will define the problem and goals in a design brief, conduct secondary and primary research, map a stakeholder journey, brainstorm and sort innovation concepts, iteratively prototype solutions, test and refine prototypes with stakeholders, and create and present the final innovation to managers.

Project Deliverables

The deliverables are a project portfolio or written report of the process and learnings/outcomes, and a final prototype that tangibly translates the idea into an effective solution, i.e. a desirable, feasible, and viable answer to the problem of U.S. food waste/loss.

[1] Food loss is unintentional, such as when trucks transport tomatoes from a farm to a supermarket, but some tomatoes are bruised or crushed en route, so they have to be discarded; food waste is intentional, such when diners leave uneaten food on their plates at a restaurant or consumers throw away bread into garbage bins because it is past the "best by..." date.