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Leon & On

Info

This was undertaken as a team project over a 2 day period for a hackathon hosted by the Design Engineering Society, partnered with Leon - a UK fast food chain. We were tasked with analysing their current packaging system, and set the challenge to design a new proposal that would improve sustainability within their restaurants.

Problem

We discovered that Leon's current packaging was single-use only and that many consumers were unsure of proper disposal methods. This meant that recylable material was being sent unnecessarily to landfill. Furthermore, research indicated that recycling alone is not sufficient, as around 80% of waste sent to recycling ends up in landfill anyway.

Solution

Leon & On proposes an intuitive return and reuse scheme, where food is served in foldable flat packs that can be returned to store for future use, with consumer rewards as and when packages are returned. This showed to have beneficial impact on the environment, reducing waste being sent to landfill, as well as promoting customer loyalty in the form of a corresponding rewards scheme.

_________ Hack Summary _________

Project Overview

The slides here provide the key details of our proposal.

Instead of customers throwing away their food packaging into waste bins, they would now simply fold their packaging flat, and pass them into the in-store pods.

The packaging is designed to be easy to unfold, and the pods are designed to maintain ease of use, with QR codes being scanned once by the user, and once by the pod to track returns.

Our flat packs have a 200-time reuse life cycle, and after 7 reuses are better for the environment than the current single-use cardboard packs, based on carbon emissions.

Comparison of the current packaging system against our newly proposed system
Key details in relation to the flat pack food containers
Key details in relation to the pods where packages will be returned
A visualisation of how the interface may work when users return their flat packs
Key details in relation to the associated app and loyalty scheme
A photo of our team as we began our presentation to the panel

Project Outcome

My main roles were to design the pod interaction, define its key features, and design the interface. Another member then produced the CAD for the pod, based on my designs.

After presenting our proposal to the panel of guests from Leon, our team was awarded the prize for best in the Sustainable Packaging Category.

This was my first Hackathon that I had attended, and it highlighted my ability to be adaptable and learn new skills in a very short time period. At this point (first term of University), I had not greatly developed my CAD skills, and so since completing this hackathon I have returned to this project as an opportunity to further practice my Solidworks and Blender techniques.

_________ Skills Developed _________

Soft Skills

Sustainable Design | User Experience Design | Presenting | Communication & Teamwork

Hard Skills

CAD (Solidworks Modelling & Blender Animation)