roots | Prerna Sharma

On a mission to prevent food scraps from urban cities from ending in waste landfills by making composting so easy and hassle-free that it becomes the natural new normal.

ROLE:

PROJECT BRIEF:

The project explores composting in urban areas and addresses the low rates of participation through products, services, and systems.

GOALS:

The objective of this project was to innovate and explore new ways of handling composting in urban areas.

Roots is the ideal composting system for residential households.

Our bins have easily removable and swappable stainless steel inserts, making food scrap sorting and collection a breeze!

With our subscription plan, you can schedule convenient bin pickups through our app, ensuring that composting is always hassle-free.

30% of food scraps that go to landfills are compostable.

Every year, U.S. landfills are filled with 146.1 million tons of waste.

Around 30% of that is yard waste and food scraps, which contribute to the uncontrolled off-gassing of methane, a greenhouse gas 80x more potent than CO2.

If everyone in the United States composted, it would be equivalent to removing 7.8 million cars from the roads.

THE PROBLEM:

People want to compost, but composting is a messy and tedious task.

77% of the U.S. population has expressed a willingness to take personal action against climate change, but only 27% participate in composting programs.

DESIGN EXPLORATION:

In October 2023, a mandate was passed that made composting in Brooklyn mandatory.

Given the relevance and timeliness of this project, we prioritized user engagement during the sprint phase. We conducted comprehensive surveys and user-interviews to pinpoint and understand the specific challenges our design needed to address. This user-centric approach informed our design decisions and ensured our solution was tailored to genuine needs.

We also spoke with members of the NYC sanitation department, gaining firsthand insights into the city's initiatives to make composting mandatory and more efficient.

THE PIVOT:

FROM PRODUCT DESIGN TO SYSTEMS DESIGN:

During the design process of the bin, we realized that the product only dealt with the messiness component of the takeaways from the user research. It did not sufficiently address the pain points of time and effort that the users had expressed to us. So we decided to pivot our design approach and focus on a system perspective, with the conviction that the product should exist within a larger system that addresses the needs of our users.