UXR Case Study: Waste Reduction
Summary
🌱 In partnership with Zero Waste Canada, we set out to develop innovative strategies for reducing waste in Ontario communities.
This project required adaptability, leadershi, and perseverance to overcome setbacks and deliver a meaningful, real-world solution.
Key Insights
🌍 Context
We faced the complex challenge of reducing waste and encouraging community-driven sustainability efforts.
🤝 Challenge
Early ideas like addressing candy wrappers or repurposing shredded clothing were met with stakeholder criticism, demanding multiple rounds of refinement.
🌐 Solution
The Eco-Loop—a reusable container system inspired by Indian tiffin services, designed to reduce restaurant waste and align with Zero Waste Canada’s mission.
🎉 Impact
The final solution was celebrated for its cultural relevance, practical implementation, and environmental impact.
Design Process
1️⃣ Initial Brainstorming
Kicked off with design thinking workshops. Despite passionate discussions, our first ideas didn’t resonate with stakeholders, requiring a strategic pivot.
2️⃣ Leadership & Adaptability
Balancing patience during internal debates, staying flexible to support teammates, and driving the project forward with all-nighters when needed, I kept our team aligned and focused on delivering results.
3️⃣ Market Research & Outreach
I conducted thorough market research, validating our concept through direct outreach to industry leaders. Their insights confirmed feasibility, meeting Zero Waste Canada's impact goals.
4️⃣ Personas & Systems Mapping
Created personas like Maya (busy mother), Brian (community-focused politician), and Kim (revenue-conscious business owner). Using Miro, I mapped the Eco-Loop system, ensuring alignment with our strategic objectives.
Unique Elements
🔁 Eco-Loop Service
A sustainable, closed-loop container system, taking inspiration from Indian tiffin services to minimize waste and integrate smoothly into restaurant operations.
🥣 Strategic Validation
Verified feasibility through direct conversations with leaders in the environmental and business sectors, ensuring the solution met real-world needs.
🌿 By balancing strategic leadership, intense dedication, and collaborative flexibility, I led our team to transform challenges into an innovative waste reduction solution that Zero Waste Canada fully embraced.
Below, we dive deeper into the design journey and the evidence-based strategies we developed to tackle our unique challenge.
The following case study was part of my postgraduate program in Human-Centered Design, at Algonquin College.
Objectives
The chief stakeholder for this project was a non-profit organization called Zero Waste Canada (ZWC).
The problem they asked us to address was waste reduction in Canada. Understanding that pollution is a global problem, they challenged us to think big!
Addressing waste reduction in Canada is important because it can help reduce the effects of environmental problems such as climate change, soil degradation and plastics finding their way into the foods we eat.
As one of two researcher, my role included leadership, time management and a supportive negotiating platform when issues arose.
My role also included collaborative teamwork, research, ideation, problem solving. On all but one occasion, I also presented our findings and prototypes to stakeholders representatives.
Method
To develop this project, our team used design thinking and an Agile approach to team-management. We chose these specific methods because they allow us to use research findings to quickly, cheaply and efficiently develop low-fidelity prototypes.
These low-cost artefacts were then used to gather stakeholder feedback, which in turn helped guide the direction of the project.
The project was launched by meeting with ZWC where they outlined the problem space, explained their frustrations and informed us of their goals. The problem they asked us to address was waste reduction in Canada.
Because we met with stakeholders the day after Halloween, we decided to focus our preliminary investigations on the different types of waste generated during festivals and holidays.
After concluding a first round of research, we developed personas, a systems map and presented our findings to the stakeholders. We also used a definition statement (or 'How Might We' statement) to define the focus of the project.
Engaging with stakeholders helped us better understand their concerns. While they respected the need to recycle, they also emphasized the need to address the root causes of systemic ecological challenges.
Once again taking stakeholder feedback into account, the team decided that we needed to review our data, redefine how we wanted to tackle the problem and ideate new ideas accordingly. We came up with two new definition statements with one prototype for each.
My concept involved a restaurant delivery service that made use of reusable containers. The other concept — developed by one of my colleagues — involved the use of shredded fabrics for shipping products from companies such as Amazon.
Although we now had two new options, there was strong disagreement about how to interpret the client's feedback and their hierarchy of values.
In addition the team felt that we were falling behind on schedule. After much debate, we agreed to vote on the topic. The concept chosen for presentation was shredded fabrics for shipping.
“How might we encourage Ontario communities to reduce, reuse & recycle shipping packaging?”
Once again we met with the client to discuss our latest prototype — and they were unsatisfied with our solution. As shown in my meeting notes, the client outlined several problems with our concept.
The development timeline was fast approaching. As a team we felt that whatever we came up with, it had to be good!
We reviewed our data, key insights, crafted a final definition statement, redesigned our personas, and reviewed all client feedback. We felt that a restaurant delivery service that made use of reusable containers was a viable idea however we did not know if it was viable.
We conducted further research to find out if similar businesses already existed. The results were positive; we discovered that the business model we had in mind already existed in several places such as Toronto (Suppli), New-York City (DeliverZero) and Durham in North Carolina (GreenToGo).
We contacted each of the businesses by email and were privileged to meet with the founder and CEO of Suppli who had a lot of wisdom and helpful advice for our project. Below is a sample of some of my notes from that meeting. The help of this subject matter expert (SME) proved invaluable during our final stakeholder meeting.
Having reviewed all of our work, we developed a new (and final) definition statement:
“How might we reduce the amount of plastic used for packaging restaurant delivery items?”
The prototype we developed was a not-for-profit that we called 'Eco-Loop'. Our Eco-Loop system rethinks the restaurant delivery service by making use of reusable containers and utensils.
By rethinking existing systems, reusing food containers and utensils, we aim to reduce the amount of plastic used for packaging restaurant delivery items. Below are a selection of slides from our presentation.
Outcome
The outcomes of the project were the developed a not-for-profit company that would help reduce business costs for restaurants, appeal to political leaders and communities, and finally reduce plastic waste in Canada.
The clients were very impressed with the outcome of our hard work; after several iterations, we had finally delivered a prototype that not only met the project goals but also went beyond their expectations!
They were impressed with the way that we addressed community, business and political concerns through our Pillars and our personas.
They also appreciated the fact that our Principles aligned with their values, with our approach to implementation, how we intended to track metrics, the way that our system map communicated the system holistically, how we intended to scale the business model over time and finally, they were impressed with the product materials we proposed and how we would dispose of them at the end of their life cycle.
One of the lessons I learned from the methods used and the outcome of our project is the importance of 'failing up'. To me 'failing up' not only means being open to criticism and difficult meetings or presentations, but also an understanding that — as humans — we are constantly learning.
I also learned to appreciated the iterative nature of an Agile approach to project management and design thinking. Below you can see the poster we created to share our project.
