Mark Rous

Reserve

Bachelor of Design Design for Sustainability Product Design Climate change Ecology and Sustainability Sustainability

As compost tubs fill up, they can be cycled aroudn the system allowing for full containers to be replaced with empty ones and worms to migrate into whichever container has food.

Reserve - Worm Farm and Planter Box: reducing food waste by turning it into a valuable resource

Mark Rous (2023) Reserve: Reframing food waste as a resource for inner-city apartment dwellers.

Reserve was designed to target food waste reduction for inner city dwellers living in small apartments.

The main drive was to help users reduce the volume of outgoing food waste by helping reframe it as a resource, and this was tackled by finding a way to use composting worms to break down food waste and turn it into a fertiliser product that can be then utilised within the same system for growing edible plants.
By keeping the footprint small, Reserve is able to be kept inside an apartment with limited space, presenting as a piece of furniture rather than utilitarian garden equipment.

By providing a use for food scraps, they retain value in the users eyes and become something they can benefit from, helping people make more environmentally friendly decisions about what they choose to throw out and what to keep.
This can help to reduce the volume of food waste that ends up in landfills which contributes to global greenhouse gas emissions.

Food scraps can be placed directly into one of the top tubs, allowing for worms to break them down into compost

The Reserve is made to have a small footprint, enabling it to fit in almost any small home/apartment.

Carry handles allow the Reserve to be repositioned easily.