The final leaflet

Based on the all of the input from residents, and with feedback from Camden Council and ELCRP, we have designed a final leaflet to explain to residents how to use the new food waste scheme. Hoorah!

It will be delivered to every resident on the estate with their food waste caddy, starting on the 21st of September.

You can see the cover, leaflet and A5 leaflet insert here:

Testing the prototypes

As part of our leaflet design process, the resident design team got to trial four different ‘prototype’ leaflets. These were based on all of the comments and feedback received at the workshop. Here are the four leaflets:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here’s how well they worked:

How many great ideas can you fit on a post-it note?

These are Sean’s notes from our workshop last Sunday.

Don’t be fooled by their size – a few words but lots of great ideas!

Being designers for a day

On Sunday we held our first proper Food Loop workshop. What a great success! 

We started with discussion of the photos taken by our team of residents using their custom-made Food Loop cameras. The group used the photos as the starting point to explore how ideas about food waste could be communicated. There were some great ideas about what a good leaflet will need to include: 

• Use a mixture of photos and text
• Celebrate success to demonstrate that composting works
• Big and bold! The leaflet needs to stand out. Use colour!
• Residents’ words. Use the knowledge of residents.
• What’s in it for me? Sell the benefits of recycling food waste.
• Mr Compost Man. Design a recognisable role model.

During the day the group designed several different types of posters and discussed how to motivate people to compost their food waste. We talked about how to ensure the scheme worked and even took part in a fun (and a bit gross) game of sorting rubbish.

Finally, everyone produced their own posters which will be the inspiration for the final communications materials for the scheme.

In addition, some of the younger residents made wonderful posters and banners to advertise the launch. The rocket is coming!

Overall, a great success – thanks to everyone!

Ready for development

Members of the Food Loop design team have been busy taking photos this week. The results are on their way to be developed…

 

Our big rubbish idea: first meeting with residents

After months of highs and lows, the project team are today basking in the success of our first Food Loop meeting with residents yesterday. The meeting had three aims:

• To give us all and residents a chance to meet each other
• To introduce the project and to share Our Big Rubbish Idea
• To tell residents more about next Sunday’s workshop

Clare’s hardwork recruiting and telephoning paid off and a great team of residents joined us at the Community Centre.  

The afternoon began with some discussions about life on Maiden Lane and a walk to the nearby bins to talk about rubbish on the estate. Although there are some recycling facilities on the Estate, there is no doorstep collection and for some the recycling bins are a long way from their homes. It is also a bit confusing knowing what can and can’t go into the bins.

After our ‘rubbish walk’, we talked about food waste and explained why it’s such a problem in the UK. Residents are excited at the prospect of the food waste collection scheme, but there were some doubts about how many people on the Estate will use it. Hopefully all of them!

Homework time: the Food Loop camera challenge

What was the last item of food you threw away? How do you learn how to use a new product or service? How best could we inform residents what they can put in their new food waste bins?

These are the kinds of questions we need to answer but they are quite tricky. To help our resident design team think about about them before our first workshop, the team have been persuaded to do a bit of homework before we next meet – the Food Loop Camera Challenge.

Armed with their very own Food Loop disposable cameras*, the team have been asked to take photos of two things:

• Food in the home – in the fridge, on the table, leftover on plates or on its way to the bin. We’ve also asked for photos of kitchen bins.
• Examples of information that is presented in a way that is easy to understand. This might be posters, flyers, text messages, adverts, signs, instruction manuals or websites.

We will be discussing the photos that residents take at our workshop and may even post one or two on the blog. Watch this space!

 * ‘Disposable cameras? That doesn’t sound very environmentally friendly’  Actually, it is, we checked! Single use cameras are designed to be recycled, so the film can be easily removed by the developer without destroying the camera itself. Our cameras are manufactured by Fuji, who have been conducting a recycling scheme for their single use cameras since 1990.

Click here for more information about what will happen to our Food Loop cameras once we have finished with them.