Maintaining Food Consumer Behavior and Attaining Zero Waste through Design Thinking Approach

Today's globe still has a serious issue with domestic food waste. Food waste is a growing issue that has an impact on the entire agro-food supply chain, according to scientific data and several reports. The effects of the Covid-19 outbreak on consumer eating patterns, habits, and wasteful behavior at the household level have been the subject of recent research, and it appears that increases in food waste peaked during lockdown. Design Thinking (DT) is a creative process that can aid individuals in maintaining the excellent habits they have formed to prevent food waste while the area is in lockdown. A problem-solving methodology is not all that DT is. This essay supports the notion that by utilizing DT, awareness-raising tactics may be created to persuade the eventual consumer to continue the excellent food management practices they established during lockdown. The use of four criteria—desirability, feasibility, viability, and sustainability—to assess the impact of design thinking on sustainable food consumer behavior. Design experts and practitioners have proposed two pre-pandemic strategies to reduce consumer food waste that have been successful in achieving this goal. These initiatives are based on what is highlighted by design-thinking literature with relation to sustainability and zero waste. To preserve and bolster emergent food-management methods and behavioral patterns, the CEASE (Communities, Engagement, Actions, Shareability and Ecosystems) design thinking approach is suggested.

? How to measure the effects of DT on consumer behavior for food?

Methodology

Food waste initiatives in the pre-Covid-19 age

1. Case study: Fleet Farming

2. Case study II: Food Flow

? Using the CEASE DT approach to maintain good food management practices

The CEASE canvas

Instead of concentrating on how to sell consumers previously existing things, design thinking approaches may encourage businesses to address consumer requirements. This has a direct bearing on the creation of a functional theory of consumer behavior and thought. The CEASE model illustrates how each user can have a major impact on and improve the quality of life for each and every member of the community. Design thinking's mindsets and metric framework are evolving. It is shifting from viewing a product as just a physical object to seeing it as a link in a web of connections that serves a variety of purposes for different people. As a result, the significance of these linkages is equal to that of the thing itself. The systems theory, which emphasizes the idea that everything is the result of a network of interpersonal interactions, also has a lot of resonance with this idea