After going to the open day at Coveris innovation centre I came away with designing with ‘what’s the end game?’ this was shared insight from the lecture given by the retail institute.

This question, what’s the end game? Became the foundation of my presentation for the Iceland pitch, it also formed the foundation during a presentation sharing my design exploration of SEAsoning to 2nd year students.

The question what’s the end game propelled design exploration and design ideas, because now I wasn’t just designing a product but I was designing for where the product was going to end up. In this case of a food contact tray; landfill or incineration. This incite gave clarity to choice of materials and why not to use paper or plastic.

Looking back at design concept Mushroom paper, even though it can be recycled and in theory the mushroom spores would break down surrounding chemicals if landfill; now armed with the question of what’s the end game? and having answered that with a visit to HW Martin, discussions with Alastair Little, also a reasearch day into council curbside collection I know that the tray’s that I design will be Incinerated.

The images below show conceptual mushroom paper packaging, and a tray made out the paper, the tray was tested in the fridge, freezer and oven. It passed all my home user testing. I didn’t take the design of the material forward because of the secondary use. The mushrooms didn’t grow, and the material wouldn’t be valuable to waste collection services.

The last two images are of a presentation shown to 2nd year product design students to show my design thinking on sustainable design.I had a great time. From this I gained the confidence to say ‘yes’ to being asked to present to school levers at York university this summer 2019. Totally honoured.