Mapping the Downstream Food Waste System
Now that we had identified the “Who’s,” “Why’s,” and “So What’s” of our problem space, we needed to take a more detailed look of the factors that affect food waste to determine possible points of intervention. As a result, we embarked on the process of systems mapping.
Systems mapping is a technique used to better understand a problem space because it “shift[s] the goal of action on significant problems from ‘solution’ to ‘intervention’” (“Wholesome Design for Wicked Problems,” Robert Knapp). Often, the problems we are dealing with are multidimensional and are a cause of several interrelated factors. Systems mapping involves identifying those factors as nodes and creating connections between them, which allows us to see all the causes and consequences of the problem we may not have thought about before. Not only can a holistic understanding of the problem space help us identify points of intervention, but it can also allow us to eventually develop smarter solutions — ones that are not superficial and do not come with unintended consequences.
During our systems mapping process, we began by setting a geographical boundary of the U.S., as well as a problem space boundary of “downstream” food waste, which we defined as everything the consumer interacts with in the supply chain after processing and distribution of food.
Then, each team member wrote on sticky notes different factors contributing to food waste that they researched. While each person presented their findings, we combined our sticky notes and drew connections between them. This is the initial brainstorming we did for the systems map.
Because this map became cluttered and difficult to follow, we wanted to organize our nodes better in a second attempt with the sticky notes on paper. We started with a central “food waste” node this time, then branching out to create chains of nodes through looking for causes and contributors. To organize the nodes, we were originally thinking of creating food chain “category” nodes that branch off from the central “food waste” node, such as “food wasted from restaurants” or “food wasted from grocery stores.” However, we found that several of the factors that lead to food wasted from different parts of the food waste were the same. As a result, we decided to organize by major reasons food is wasted, like “unserved food perishes,” “plate waste,” or “safe food discarded.” We dove deeper into the consumer side of the system, looking particularly into the perspective of the home cook or just household consumption.
After several group meetings of using sticky notes and markers to determine system nodes and interactions, we decided that the physical formatting was becoming far too confusing to carry on. It was difficult to reorganize nodes and add nodes, especially in cluttered areas with several influencing factors. As such, we relocated to kumu.io for future systems mapping, where the nodes and connections are easy to see, present, and reorganize. After some learning and experimenting with the new site, we were comfortable with translating our hard-copy work onto the digital medium. Here was our first draft:
Some notable additions to the Kumu draft include our use of color-coded tags to label different nodes with which groups of people are connected to them. This labelling makes it easy to see who or what are the causes or contributors to food waste, and ease of use is important. From this point we are hoping to expand the system as well as improve the look of the map to make even easier to navigate for first-time viewers.
After re-examining our Kumu map, we decided to expand the main “food waste” node to add a new branch regarding how surplus food is managed once it leaves farms, stores, restaurants, and homes. Food can be thrown into landfills, composted, donated, or used as livestock feed. Some major causes of why food is wasted are overproduction due to inaccurate demand forecasting, how certain foods do not meet standards, neglected expiration dates, and overstocking. Before adding these nodes to our Kumu map, we made a draft of the connections:
After expanding the “food waste” node into multiple other nodes, we made some formatting changes to aid readability of the map. We grouped the nodes based on “community” suggestions by Kumu. We also made sure to proof our systems map several times over and edit wording and connections accordingly. We think this that the final map will be a beneficial tool to identify key points of intervention, and the rules we have in place for our map will allow us to easily make changes as our understanding of the problem grows.
In this first view, we used a dark theme and bubble of the same blue hue to emphasize the connections between nodes. We also sized each node based on the number of connections it has to show which nodes have the greatest influence. The legend shows the category of stakeholder that each node falls into.
The Grand Challenges assignment asked us to include Economic, Social, Technology, Policy, and Environmental nodes. However, when we attempted to include these nodes into our systems map, we didn’t think the process was helpful to our understanding of the problem. Several nodes related to one category could be spread out all over the map. Instead, we created the second view shown below, which colors each node according to these categories. Grey (uncolored) nodes were too broad to fit into just one of these categories.
Between these two views, the multitude of connections and nodes, the interviews we conducted, and the research we completed, producing the systems map has greatly increased our understanding of the problem. We now have a valuable tool to understand the problem of downstream food waste inside the U.S., which will help us identify points of intervention.
