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Come/post

A Playful Contribution to Rehabilitate Soil

Björk Gunnbjörnsdóttir

Supervisor: Anna Maria Orrù Individual Study Plan in Design

MFA degree project | 2020

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Abstract

In this project I will explore food waste and how we can study and partake in nature’s ecosystem, in our daily lives, using a playful approach.

One-third of all food produced in the world is wasted. Our systems encourage consumeristic behaviours and wastefulness, they encourage exponential growth in preference to circularity. Human disconnection to nature’s ecosystems is resulting in depleting, eroding and polluted soils.

Soil is the foundation of life, humans would not exist without it. Our food exists because of soil and we obtain energy from the food we eat - unfortunately, the nutrients in our food are declining due to intensive industrial farming. Compost enhances the soil, nourishes the life within it. We can think of nutrients as our source of energy. This flow of energy in nature goes from soils to plants, to animals, fungi, microorganisms, bacteria and back to its origin - the soil. Organic matter is fundamental to create viable habitat and preserve water in the soil. Why are not all of us composting? How can composting be involved in our everyday life?

My ambition is to make a playful and low tech, human-powered composting machine. Where children can collaborate with older generations, together, learning how to turn their food waste to compost, while playing. With low tech machines run by human energy, I implement movements and play to evoke curiosity. While having fun I want to change our thoughts of waste to valuable resources.

Keywords: design, play, compost, soil, food waste, climate change, consumerism, environmental awareness, food health, circularity.

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Abstract 1

A journey towards waste 5

Excess 8

Food waste a consumer behaviour 8

Human and/ against nature 11

Process 14

Composting 16

The power of play 20

Prototyping 23

Come/post 25

Conclusion 28

Appendix 32

Glossary 36

References 37

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“Where does the process of change begin for any of this? It can only start with us as individuals, looking to our personal ecologies and then trying to extend it from there. We can do it by rejecting junk infotainment, junk aspirations, junk possessions, junk choices, junk food, junk life...the whole gamut of junk striving. And we can work to break the taboos by bringing new ideas to the agenda, through writing, blogging, arguing, lobbying - and most of all, through living by example. If others are inspired by our lifestyle to change their own, then with luck the pressure may grow.”1

1 John Naish, Enough: Breaking Free from the World of Excess (London: Hodder Paperbacks, 2009), p.267.

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5 year old Gunnhildur Kristjánsdóttir, later known as amma

Gunnhildur (my grandmother). Amma Gunnhildur, 83 years old, re-adjusting her pants with her foot driven sewing machine.

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A journey towards waste

One of my biggest inspirations in life is my grandmother. She was born in 1930, brought up on a farm in the west of Iceland where they bred their sheep and cows, picked berries and herbs, grew vegetables, pickled, dried, boiled and prepared their food to preserve for the winter. Garments were sown and knitted, and patched and repaired when broken. Most toys were twigs, bones, stones and other things found in nature. Her gifts were very creative, often a combination of found objects and scraps, put together. She took great care of everything she owned, never had too much, reused everything she had.

In her lifetime human consumption behaviour changed extremely. The US army occupied Iceland and after WWII the country experienced a snowball effect of new inventions, new materials, cheap materials, technical solutions, mass production, pesticides, fertilisers and so on. Endemic occupations moved from farming and fishing to industry and service.1 Now, shipping or flying fresh produce across the planet is as ordinary as eating locally grown food. Being content with what we have and our belonging in nature have somehow faded.

Being a designer in a world, overflown with cheap consumer goods, is an overwhelming and significant challenge. Objects are made to last through a short trend, out of materials that will surely last longer than our bodies ever will. My aspiration is to change thoughts and perception, to pursue responsibility for our

1 Huginn Freyr Þorsteinsson et al., “Ísland og fjórða iðnbyltingin”, Stjórnarráð Íslands/Forsætisráðuneyti, February, 2019, https://www.stjornarradid.is/lisalib/getfile.aspx?itemid=03be6340-3bfc-11e9-9436-005056bc4d74, p.15.

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actions, consumption and production. That includes sourcing for local produce, materials and labour and taking responsible decisions, thinking of the environment and the impact each step can make.

About 6 or 7 years ago I started working with waste materials, then it was mainly offcuts from wood. For my bachelor’s graduation, I made a material using sawdust, potato starch and vinegar. It is a strong and light material, made out of cheap and undesired components, that will biodegrade rapidly in nature. Material research has always been a fascination of mine that will likely continue. As of today, I am a part of a Precious Plastics group project in Stockholm. The plan is to build a plastic recycling centre for the public, like it has been done in so many cities. It is a great initiative to educate about plastic recycling, however, I am a bit sceptical of recycling non-organic waste that others produce, only to encourage them to produce even more waste.

Last year I intentionally began to pay more attention to the waste my family and I produce. We started composting our food waste, which was surprisingly more than we had expected. Because it was collected in one place, over a period of time, it became very visual how much food waste we produced in a month. I had also noticed the amount of waste at my university, Konstfack, the previous year. Following that I gathered all kinds of material found in waste bins and did a little survey at Konstfack asking passers-by “Is this waste?” and “When does something become waste?”. The fact that more than 50% of participants thought of a banana peel as waste, led me to a biogas project I did called Banana Republic. There I show a character, named Bob, eating one banana a day and how he harvests the energy of his banana peels to grow berries.

These waste explorations have led me towards nature, biodiversity and composting - and thoughts about what I, as a designer, can do to contribute.

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Top: Banana Republic.

Bottom: BDFU 1:3 / Björk G.

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Excess

All generations have had to overcome some changes, obstacles, setbacks and traumas. We live in times of changes. Changes on earth’s climate, temperature and ecosystems have happened rapidly before, however, this time they are human-made.2

As I am writing this, a pandemic outbreak of the COVID-19 virus is spreading across the world. It is quite obvious how immense the impact we humans have on the environment. While humans keep their 2-metre distance and stay inside, animals have taken over streets and parks.3 Satellite images are showing a significant decrease in air pollution after businesses are forced to shut down temporarily due to the pandemic.4 While people stock up on pasta, flour and yeast (and surely toilet paper) it raises the discussion about food safety and supporting infrastructure in local productions.

Food waste and consumer behaviour

I grew up knowing for a fact that in August, and only once a year, blueberries and crowberries are ready for picking. Location in the country and amount of sun and rain during the summer, as well as frost and snow during the winter, will determine the number of berries one will find. The right conditions need to exist for

2 “Climate Change Evidence: How Do We Know?”, NASA, December 30, 2019, https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/.

3 “The Urban Wild: Animals Take to the Streets amid Lockdown – in Pictures”, The Guardian (Guardian News and Media), April 22, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2020/apr/22/animals-roaming-streets-coronavirus-lockdown-photos.

4 “Airborne Nitrogen Dioxide Plummets Over China,” NASA, accessed April 17, 2020, https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/imag- es/146362/airborne-nitrogen-dioxide-plummets-over-china.

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the berries to grow, and those are mostly dependent on weather conditions and of course landscape and vegetation. In Iceland, August is the harvest month for most food grown outdoors. Even though this is a well-known fact, for most inhabitants, the supply and demand for fresh food do not change much along with it. Nowadays we go to the grocery store expecting to get everything we want, need and crave at any hour and any time of the year. Food is shipped and flown across the planet so we can, for instance, offer fresh blueberries with our pancakes - in January.

Food production including distribution, processing, retailing and consumption, adds up to about 21-37% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions.5 Even the food we do not eat has an enormous impact. In 2011, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimated that staggering one-third of all edible food produced on the planet ends up being wasted.6 Food waste occurs in all stages, from production to our kitchen table, a large amount of it occurs in the household. Parts

5 J. Shukla et al., “Technical Summary,” Climate Change and Land: an IPCC Special Report on Climate Change, Desertification, Land Degradation, Sustainable Land Management, Food Security, and Greenhouse Gas Fluxes in Terrestrial Ecosystems, 2019, p58.

6 “Global Food Losses and Food Waste – Extent, Causes and Prevention”, FOA, Rome, 2011, p.v.

A world map, based on FOA, report showing the biggest food wasters in the world coloured with red.

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of that waste might be “unavoidable” food waste such as peels, coffee grounds and bones.7 However, it is not the case for all the waste, the amount varies a lot between countries. Numbers show that food waste is closely connected to wealth, in other words shockingly 10-15 times more food is wasted in the wealthier countries. A person in Europe and North America wastes on average 95-115 kg a year, but only 6-11kg a year in sub-Saharan Africa and South/Southeast Asia.8 Fridges are overflowing with food and our portions are getting larger. Who does not remember leaving food on their plate because they could not possibly eat another bite? Overconsumption is also an extensive problem and our current habits lead to obesity. It is predicted that 86%

of Americans may be overweight or obese by 2030.9

In many cases, food waste will end up worthless in a landfill. With lack of oxygen, bacteria break down organic matter creating methane gas (CH4) that releases into the atmosphere. Methane gas is a powerful greenhouse gas which increases global warming around 25% more than carbon dioxide (CO2) does in 100 years.10 In some countries, like Sweden, where organic waste has been banned from landfills, there are systems of recycling food waste to create biogas to power the public bus system.11 It is a very effective way to capture energy from the waste and turn it into both fuel and nutrition. Nonetheless, those systems do not exist everywhere, trucks are essential for picking up food waste and the consumer has to pay a company to pick up their valuable resources. There is a certain disconnection between the consumer and his responsibility for his own waste.

The demand on society to adjust their consumeristic behaviours, to reduce greenhouse gas emission, seems somewhat impossible for most of us, and it might be easier to go into a state of denial than face those insurmountable facts. However, taking a step back and adjusting our habits does not have to be simply dull and difficult, possibly it is a worthwhile adventure.

7 “Matavfall i Sverige - Uppkomst och behandling 2016”, Naturvårdsverket, 2018, p. 6.

8 “Global Food Losses and Food Waste – Extent, Causes and Prevention”, FOA, Rome, 2011, p.v.

9 John Naish, Enough: Breaking Free from the World of Excess (London: Hodder Paperbacks, 2009), p.54.

10 Björklund Johanna, Holmgren Pär, and Susanne Johansson, Mat & Klimat (Stockholm: Medström, 2008), p.1.

11 “A Strategy for Sustainable Waste Management, Sweden’s Waste Plan”, Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, Stock- holm, 2005, p.22.

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Human and/against nature

What is waste? In his book Design for the circular economy, Martin Charter defined waste “...as object without value and without liable owner”.12 The food we grow or buy but do not eat such as peels, some roots, stems or rotten food is normally called food waste. Waste, as if it has no purpose or value anymore. Possibly, and let us assume that food waste is not the correct term, would we see it differently if it were to be called a different name?

Waste does not exist in nature.13 At least not waste as described by Charter.

In nature each organism’s process contributes to the whole ecosystem, one’s waste might be another’s valuables. If you leave food outside, for example, it would never be wasted, as there would always be some living being to feed on it. Humans create massive amounts of waste, by that I mean not only organic waste. If it is true that waste does not exist in nature or that nature does not create waste - are humans not a part of nature? Oxford English Dictionary defines the word nature as:

“The phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of

the earth, as opposed to humans or human creations.”14

According to the dictionary, humans and their creations are not nature. If so, when did humans separate themselves from nature? This could be a long discussion and I actually disagree with the dictionary. The word nature is a broad term and can be used in different contexts of course, and it is a matter of interpretation. For sure

12 Martin Charter, Design for the Circular Economy (London: Routledge, 2019), p.14.

13 Sue L. T. Mcgregor, “Transdisciplinarity and Biomimicry”, Transdisciplinary Journal of Engineering & Science 4, no. 1 (2013), https://doi.org/10.22545/2013/00042).

14 “Nature: Definition of Nature by Oxford Dictionary”, Oxford English Living Dictionary, accessed May 13, 2020, en.oxforddic- tionaries.com/definition/nature.

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human beings have and do dictate the earth and most of us act like we are greater than other living beings. We used to be hunters and gatherers living with nature, now we are constantly trying to control it.

It is nothing new and probably started thousands of years ago, first with the dictation of animals, followed by agriculture and permanent settlement. However, it was not until the last few centuries and after science came along that humans began to control and power over nature on a different level.15 After WWII “miracle fertilizers”

were invented promising to increase production while “...pesticides would deal with the pests and illnesses that had limited output in the past.”16 For me this sentence by E.B. White says everything needed to say about our relationship with nature:

“I am pessimistic about the human race because it is too ingenious for its own good. Our approach to nature is to beat it into submission. We would stand a better chance of survival if we accommodated ourselves to this planet and viewed it appreciatively

instead of skeptically and dictatorially”17

With industrialised farming acres are tilled, pesticides are used to kill insects and fertilisers are used in abundance. Instead of supporting the ecosystem and the living beings in the soil which help with the plant growth, everything except the desirable plant is killed. The pesticides pile up in the soil where the crops will absorb them, eventually delivering them to our own plate.18 Human disconnection to nature’s ecosystems is not sustainable and is resulting in depleting, eroding and polluted soils.19 We are eating more fruit and vegetables today than we did 50 years ago, yet

15 Yuval Noah Harari, “Industrial Farming Is One of the Worst Crimes in History”, The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, September 25, 2015), https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/25/industrial-farming-one-worst-crimes-history-ethi- cal-question).

16 Claire Catterall, Food: Design and Culture, (London: Laurence King in association with Glasgow 1999, 2000), p. 83.

17 Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, (Mariner Books (Houghton Mifflin, 2002), p. 1.

18 Carson, p. 59.

19 N. Rodríguez-Eugenio, M. McLaughlin, and D. Pennock, “Soil Pollution: a Hidden Reality”, (Rome, FAO, 2018).

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getting less nutrients.20 That means a carrot is not just a carrot, it can look almost exactly the same and still vary tremendously in nutrient content.

If our thought of nature is: An ecosystem where everything is linked together through energy nutrient cycles and energy flows - human beings are not fully taking part in the system. It does not mean they can not be a part of the collective physical world, of an ecosystem. It is a matter of doing and willing. From the start, human beings are a part of nature just like all other animals, no more significant than others.

Humans are a part of nature - because they can not live without it.

20 Sista Skörden, Tina-Marie Qwiberg, Mikael Qwiberg and Andi Loor (Sweden, 2017), seen on SVT.

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Process

At the start of this project, I was sure that I wanted to work with food, have fun and be playful throughout the process.

For some years I have been intrigued by playful projects, designers and machines, especially low tech machines, for example, the Low Tech Factory projects by ECAL students and the Marble Machine by Wintergatan. Rube Goldberg, a cartoonist and an inventor who drew diagrams of over-complicated and humorous machines, has also been an inspiration for a while.21 His machines were known to do an incredibly simple gesture in a ridiculously complex way and usually a much longer time than it would normally take to do. His work affected others and started a movement of crazy machine making inspired by his work. Their playfulness and movements evoke curiosity, excitement and laughter. These are elements that I want to take with me and connect to my project.

I get overwhelmed by the amount of waste and packaging around our food systems, the distances the food travels, the effect the demand on fashionable food has on societies. That is why I wanted to base my project on the politics of food - the production, distribution, consumption and waste. Delfina Foundation has been running a program for some years under the title The Politics of Food, and recently published a book by the same title. Both their website and book have a number of very interesting and inspiring projects and discussions made on this topic, but the topic is substantial. In order to move forward, I had to narrow down. I made a decision to work

21 “The Man Behind the Machine,” Rube Goldberg, accessed April 16, 2020, https://www.rubegoldberg.com/the-man-behind- the-machine/.

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with food waste, more specifically composting food waste. This decision was made because I believe a large part of the food waste issue is due to consumers’ inability, yet it being their responsibility. I had been experimenting with bokashi composting at home, as well as having a compost pile in the garden. I also signed up for all kinds of Facebook groups about composting, food movements around Stockholm and dumpster diving (A), to get a grasp of what people are doing in my neighbourhood.

I have seen a few projects where public waste bins were made interactive such as The World’s Deepest Trash Bin and Talking Rubbish. Only by adding a sound when something is thrown into the bin made people pick up waste from the ground to put in the bin.22 I also think that when a person is responsible for composting their own waste, their thoughts will change slightly. For instance, when my family and I started composting, we all of a sudden became aware of how extensive the amount of food waste we produced was. It has led us to become more conscious about how much we cook, how we preserve our food, put things in the freezer before it goes bad, and what we buy - for example, pineapple offcuts will almost fill the bin.

Discussions about waste and climate issues can quickly become very serious, deep, dark and overwhelming, that is why I chose to address these issues in a playful way by intertwining them with low tech machines.

22 Hubbub, “Talking Rubbish,” Hubbub Foundation, accessed May 3, 2020, https://www.hubbub.org.uk/talking-rubbish.

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Composting

Looking back I have some memories from composting at school, in 5th or 6th grade, stirring in a smelly compost pile, observing or counting the worms. It was a great attempt to teach us about composting, but It wasn’t particularly the job I signed up for or enjoyed at that time.

My belief is that many people, like myself before, are hesitant to take that step to start composting. To be able to know the percentage of how many are sorting their food waste or making their own compost I conducted a short survey. The survey was conducted online on the 22nd of April 2020, in Icelandic, therefore most of the participants live in Iceland. Out of the 97 participants, nearly two-thirds (63%) did not separate their food waste from other waste. When asked why, the most decisive answers were either “I don’t have a place for it”, “the municipality does not collect organic waste”, “I don’t know what to do with it” or simply “laziness”. To my surprise only 4 persons mentioned some sort of disgust, smell or pests, most knew they could do better and the will to try is certainly there. Half of those who collect food waste make their own compost, the others leave it to the municipality. Those who collect food waste but do not compost, roughly 18%, most often “don’t know how” or “don’t

Results from the question: Do you separate your food waste from other household waste?

Já : 37.00%

Nei : 63.00%

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have space for it”. My impression, from going through the answers, is that those who do compost truly know the importance of composting and that the others are willing, but waiting for easy solutions.

Composting truly is a complex process where organic matter decomposes and turns into nutritious conditioner for soil, making a valuable product out of so-called waste. Soil contains mineral solids, water air and organic matter. Those need to be in balance to make good soil - depending on what you might grow. Organic matter will increase nutrients including carbon in the soil, carbon that stores water. An increase by as little as a percentage in soil carbon per hectare will store an extra 144,000 litres of water.23

Compost enhances the soil and creates a beneficial environment for the plants, fungi, microorganisms and bacteria, while fertilisers only feed the plants. Poor plant health is often because of poor soil - even if it gets fertilisers, they do not help with the soils’ texture. Plants use nutrients from the soil to grow and when the plant is removed from the soil the nutrients are removed with it. By composting you bring nutrients back to the soil, which leads to a more and healthier growth of plants.

Since I do not have a great experience in composting, which seems quite complex when you start to research, I contacted Josef Carey, a plant physician, photosynthesis manager and soil rehabilitator. He is the CEO of 59 degrees, a company that focuses on producing soil regenerating products and educating growers on the importance of healthy soil. His passion for climate issues, soil and food health was deeply inspiring. He told me about what makes good compost, that the quality lies in a good balance of materials, oxygen flow and taking good care of the compost.

Talking to him I found out that compost actually should not smell, and if it does smell something is wrong. We talked a lot about the difference between growing food in healthy soil versus the plants being fed artificial fertilisers. When asked about if there is a measurable difference between those two he answered:

23 Micheal Mobbs, Sustainable Food (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2012), p. 137.

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“Food has to be grown in soil, and soil must be fed OM [organic matter]. In a healthy ecosystem the health of growth must match the

rate of decay. We cannot substitute synthetic fertilisers for a closed loop system. We must build stable soil aggregates to ensure plants

can assimilate the nutrients they need at the specific time of their life cycle. The NPK mentality (B) is not here to stay. The intention is, with real world examples, we can show the miraculous nature of life

when we honour the ground beneath our feet.“24

He also told me about a Bionutrient Meter, a small device that quickly measures the nutrient content in food. It can detect differences between vegetables that look the same but are grown in a different way. This project is still in the early development stages, hopefully, it will not be too long until we can easily make well-informed decisions based on nutrient content while shopping for food.25

Through a bokashi (C) group, I found out that an experimental community composting project is taking place in a small village in Iceland. I met with Björk Brynjarsdóttir, who is working on the project, and got to learn what it is about. In their case, they gather food waste from all homes in the area once a week. They take the food waste and compost using bokashi composting techniques, then sell the compost to farmers. The concept is interesting, easy for the inhabitants and profitable. The project urges people to separate their food waste, but what I was looking for is a more collaborative involvement in the composting process itself.

That is when I started looking for community gardening in Stockholm. I discovered Boodla, an urban agriculture place in the suburb of Stockholm. I went to meet Agnes Fischer and Ernesto Diaz Salvador who work at Boodla. They told me about what they do and how they fund their business by growing vegetables and selling

24 Josef Carey, in discussion with the author, January 9, 2020.

25 “Bionutrient Meter Development Kit,” Bionutrient Food Association, accessed January 13, 2020, https://bionutrient.org/site/

bionutrient-meter.

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Visit at Boodla, wormcomposting, compost heaps, hens and Ernesto.

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to their neighbours. They also employ staff to take care of community gardens and do all sorts of projects for both the municipalities and companies. Ernesto showed me how they compost, both using worm composting and a compost heap. Their compost production is very little and not sufficient for all their crops - for sure there is a possibility to connect their community gardening with community composting.

The power of play

Playing is something within us, something we may forget to cultivate as we grow older. I am fortunate to have two kids and be surrounded by play every day.

Children’s lives revolve around constant play and they will come up with a way of playing whenever and wherever they are. Things like dressing up in the morning, brushing our teeth or eating supper become much easier by involving play. When a fork suddenly turns into an aeroplane that needs a landing ground, the pancake is shaped like a dinosaur or the toast has a smiley face, eating becomes fun. Miguel Sicart wrote in his book Play Matters:

“To play is to be in the world. Playing is a form of understanding what surrounds us and who we are, and a way of engaging with

others. Play is a mode of being human.”26

We learn a lot through play. Children imitate their parents’, grandparents’ and friends’ behaviours, quirks and habits. They pretend to be grown-ups and parents, to cook dinners, serve coffee, drive a car. They even use the same techniques for negotiations. They learn social skills by passing a ball or taking turns playing a board game. By playing together we share time and learn from each other, we form bonds

26 Miguel Sicart, Play Matters (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2014), p.1.

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Playing at Tom Tits Experiments and at a playground.

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and friendship and share joy. When things become joyful and pleasant they keep you interested and focused.

I took my two daughters to Tom Tits Experiments, it is a museum close to Stockholm, full of interactive, playful and educational objects. Children and adults running around in all directions, investigating room after room full of exciting experiments, allowed to touch, play and investigate everything in the rooms. I observed while my children found things they liked and thought were worthwhile observing. They were drawn to objects with rotational motions and water. Those places had some movements or unexpectedness to them that made them stay focused and play for a while.

Another attempt to understand how my children play was done when I went to a playground, one we had never been to before. I placed a GoPro camera on my 4-year-old daughter and let her go off on her own. It was an experiment to see her perspective on the playground and how she interacts with the objects there. The video looks fast forwarded because of the excitement that went on. She went from one playhouse to the next, tried out everything very quickly and went on. She went twice to a roundabout which has six seats and is turned in rounds by biking. Her feet were too small and weak to be able to propel it forward, and her sister’s feet were even smaller. This is where my help was needed. So I sat down on the tiny bicycle, which was way too small for me, and biked round and round again. They never got tired of it and I had to give up in the end.

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Prototyping

From my conversations with composting experts, explorations and the knowledge I have already gained about composting and play, I made a list of things I thought should be involved in my project.

• Heat, CO2 and water vapour are generated in active compost. The heat in a compost pile will help to break down the organic matter quicker, however, if the heat goes over 60°C it begins to kill beneficial microbes. Therefore there has to be a way to know the temperature. It can be done with a simple thermometer, but it can also be even more visual or tactile. Water can be heated up with the compost and used to give warmth to plants growing nearby, that way it is also possible to feel the heat without getting your hands dirty.

• Turning was one of the first things I was sure I wanted to include. By turning the compost you introduce oxygen and cool the compost down. It is both beneficial to the compost and can be done playfully. That way you also avoid smell and volatilisation of nutrients.

• Emptying the container, where you collect your organic matter, into the compost bin can be a bit unpleasant, especially if it has not been emptied for some days. I want that experience to become better and more exciting.

• Emptying the compost tumbler will be needed in the end. After all the playing and hard work, where will all the compost go eventually? There are many ways to use the compost. It can be used for the plants you are growing, it could be given or sold to neighbours or it could be spread on grass and wherever in nature.

In addition to the above moisture and CO2 levels have to be measured to make a good quality batch of compost.27 A soil tester can be used for those, but I would like to keep

27 Josef Carey, in discussion with the author, January 9, 2020.

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it simple. The aim of the project has never been about making the greatest compost, rather getting people involved and interested.

I started making all kinds of small models to figure out what way would work best and be fun to turn the compost. First thoughts were to use bike pedals to turn the compost tumbler, but I realised it would not be accessible to everyone and only usable by one at a time. After many sketches and models I decided it would be nice if it would be possible to walk around and work together to turn the compost, a bonus would be if someone could sit in the middle. The decision on the shape of the compost tumbler was a difficult one and was made taking into account many problems and solutions with the complexity of building, convenience and cost. Compost tumblers come in many sizes and shapes, but there is a good reason for why many of them end up in a hexagonal shape.

Come/post

My impression is that those who compost are a minority and only a small amount of people understand the importance of keeping our soil healthy. I want to encourage others to take a step towards and engage in a more sustainable lifestyle, to benefit nature. My intention with my design is to make composting interactive and most importantly fun and desirable. To spark interest and curiosity in a composting activity that is important for the health of our planet and ourselves. How can composting be involved in our everyday life? How can composting become fun?

My aim is to make a playful and educational low tech, human-powered composting machine. A playground where one can turn their food waste to compost.

To find fun and unexpected things happening while making nutrition for their plants, garden or forest. It will be located in a community area where about 10 households can bring food waste from their homes to their composting playground. The actions on the playground are the following:

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1. Empty your food waste bin into a cone and turn a crank. The crank will chop and extrude the compost into a container.

2. The container is connected to a slingshot, now you can shoot your food waste into a compost tumbler.

3. The compost tumbler is divided into two compartments. One compartment is used at a time letting the other rest and make compost for two weeks, at least.

The tumbler needs to be turned to introduce oxygen and prevent overheating.

4. A small roundabout, where a child can be seated and turned around, is connected to the compost tumbler with a rope and gears. By playing in the roundabout you will rotate the compost and bring the heat down.

5. Water will heat up by running through the compost tumbler in a pipe. From there it will run under the plant and vegetables, giving them some extra heat for growing on cold days.

6. The water will keep on flowing ending up in a water pump. By stepping on it the water can be pumped up again, to repeat its journey.

7. Finally when the compost is ready to use the tumbler chamber is emptied into a cart. A compost spreading cart where an adult can pull and a child can help pulling or sit on top while spreading compost where it is most needed.

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Construction at home during COVID-19, CNC milling, gluing, sanding, screwing and painting.

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Conclusion

Because of the unique situation during these COVID-19 times, plans of construction changed drastically. I wanted to make everything full scale and functional, out of metal and recycled plastic, which was possibly a bit too ambitious.

Instead I changed my focus to making a model that will work for photographing and making an explanatory video. Almost everything was built in wood, a material I am most confident in using. I did almost all the work myself with the help of CNC milling.

I managed to construct most of the things I planned, although I skipped making a water pump and let water run through the compost, adding a thermometer to simplify things.

I chose the colours within mind the colours in the surrounding nature, not to be overwhelming yet visible and playful. The orange colours are to be touched, the strength of the colours indicates the importance of the surfaces. The brightest orange colour is on the surfaces that are meant to be touched while the palest is neutral. The yellow parts move and are not meant to be touched, but rather observed.

There are still many topics to be solved and developed further, such as the difference between the speed of decay in winter and summer while having the same amount of waste. Like in any community area there has to be someone who takes care of maintenance and makes sure that everything is working well, I think that person could either be in connection to a community garden or the municipality. That same person could be of some guidance to teach how to compost.

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Appendix

The feedback I got from my opponents from the presentation has been fairly positive. They seem to find the video having clear storytelling and the project playful.

I got a comment about the grinder standing out from the rest, which is very true. It was never the plan to use the grinder as is but to alter it. In the end, I made a decision to use it to be able to make a video showing my suggestion of the series of actions in the playground.

I was asked why these artefacts are five and not fifty (or any other number) and my answer was that they could have been more - if I only had more time. However these artefacts were all done to solve a specific task, those tasks could be increased or done in a more complicated way. They also could have been done in a much simpler way, but my intentions were never to have it too simple but to be able to control each step of the process f.ex. not to grind and tumble at the same time.

The project is to be developed further by talking to playground manufacturers, landscape architects and municipalities to be able to make it real. Following that, positioning choices can be made. Whether it will be positioned at an actual playground, community gardening area, housing unit or a kindergarten, the positioning will determine who will be taking care of maintenance. It was also suggested to me that this project could be connected to a wider context, to other projects such as local cultivation collaborations and beekeeping to provide a circularity and support biodiversity even more.

I have had discussions about “how to know how to use it correctly” and

“what happens if you play with it incorrectly?” - I do not have problems with that. If

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someone is there to play, in any way or form, it is only for the right reasons. There is no incorrect way of playing, but if one’s intention is to make compost, there has to be a plan to teach the “correct” way as well.

Konstfack’s physical spring exhibition was cancelled so I exhibited my work in Lusthuset, downtown in Stockholm, Drottninggatan 116A, with other design graduates as a part of a series of 7 exhibitions we called Off-site (www.off-site2020.

com). We did not get the same publicity as if we were exhibiting at the Konstfack exhibition, but those who came were very interested and engaged in the project. I had long conversations with people about composting, how they have thought about composting but not having space for it, lack of nutrients in our food and so on. It was a good decision to have an exhibition because through a website exhibition you miss out on feedback, discussions and interaction with people.

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Glossary

(A) Dumpster diving: Sourcing for treasures in dumpsters as an act of rebellion against waste, most commonly food waste. Dumpster divers mostly go to large industrial or commercial area containers and take what they need for their own consumption. In some countries it is illegal, in Sweden it is allowed as long as the container is not locked and there is no break and entry.

(B) NPK mentality: Referred to the “quick-fix” solution of using artificial fertilisers that consist of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) instead of organic matter.28

(C) Bokashi: A Japanese way of composting by fermenting organic matter.

28 Rebecca Jones, Green Harvest: a History of Organic Farming and Gardening in Australia (Collingwood, Vic.: CSIRO Pub., 2010), p35.

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References

1. “Airborne Nitrogen Dioxide Plummets Over China”. NASA. Accessed April 17, 2020. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/146362/airborne-nitrogen- dioxide-plummets-over-china.

2. “A Strategy for Sustainable Waste Management, Sweden’s Waste Plan”. Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. Stockholm, 2005.

3. “Bionutrient Meter Development Kit.” Bionutrient Meter Development Kit | Bionutrient Food Association. Accessed January 13, 2020. https://bionutrient.org/

site/bionutrient-meter.

4. Björklund Johanna, Holmgren Pär, and Susanne Johansson. Mat & Klimat.

Stockholm: Medström, 2008.

5. Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Mariner Books (Houghton Mifflin), 2002.

6. Catterall, Claire. Food: Design and Culture. London: Laurence King in association with Glasgow 1999, 2000.

7. Charter, Martin. Designing for the Circular Economy. London: Routledge, 2019.

8. “Climate Change Evidence: How Do We Know?”. NASA, December 30, 2019.

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/.

9. Eugenio Natalie Rodríguez, M. J. McLaughlin, and Daniel Pennock. Soil Pollution:

a Hidden Reality. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2018.

10. “Global food losses and food waste – Extent, causes and prevention”. FAO. 2011, Rome.

11. Harari, Yuval Noah. “Industrial Farming Is One of the Worst Crimes in History.”

The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, September 25, 2015. https://www.

theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/25/industrial-farming-one-worst-crimes- history-ethical-question.

12. Hubbub. “Talking Rubbish.” Hubbub Foundation. Accessed May 5, 2020. https://

www.hubbub.org.uk/talking-rubbish.

13. Jones, Rebecca. Green Harvest: a History of Organic Farming and Gardening in Australia. Collingwood, Vic.: CSIRO, 2010.

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14. “Matavfall i Sverige - Uppkomst och behandling 2016”, Naturvårdsverket.

Sweden, 2018.

15. Mcgregor, Sue L. T. “Transdisciplinarity and Biomimicry.” Transdisciplinary Journal of Engineering & Science 4, no. 1 (2013). https://doi.

org/10.22545/2013/00042.

16. Mobbs, Michael. Sustainable Food. Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2012.

17. Naish, John. Enough: Breaking Free from the World of Excess. London: Hodder Paperbacks, 2009.

18. “Nature: Definition of Nature by Oxford Dictionary.” Oxford English Living Dictionary. Oxford Dictionaries. Accessed May 13, 2020. en.oxforddictionaries.

com/definition/nature.

19. P.R. Shukla, J. Skea, R. Slade, R. van Diemen, E. Haughey, J. Malley, M. Pathak, J.

Portugal Pereira (eds.) “Technical Summary”, Climate Change and Land: an IPCC special report on climate change, desertification, land degradation, sustainable land management, food security, and greenhouse gas fluxes in terrestrial ecosystems, 2019.

20. Qwiberg, Tina-Marie, Mikael Qwiberg and Andi Loor. Sista Skörden, (Sweden, 2017), seen on SVT.

21. Rodríguez-Eugenio, N., M. McLaughlin, and D. Pennock. “Soil Pollution: a Hidden Reality.” FAO, 2018.

22. Sicart, Miguel. Play Matters. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014.

23. “The Man Behind the Machine.” Rube Goldberg. Accessed April 16, 2020. https://

www.rubegoldberg.com/the-man-behind-the-machine/.

24. “The Urban Wild: Animals Take to the Streets amid Lockdown – in Pictures.” The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, April 22, 2020. https://www.theguardian.

com/world/gallery/2020/apr/22/animals-roaming-streets-coronavirus- lockdown-photos.

25. Þorsteinsson, Huginn Freyr, Guðmundur Jónsson, Ragnheiður Hrefna

Magnúsdóttir, Lilja Dögg Jónsdóttir and Kristinn R. Þórisson. “Ísland Og Fjórða Iðnbyltingin”, 2019.

All images and photographs are made or owned by Björk Gunnbjörnsdóttir.

References

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