My Final Thesis

While choosing what I wanted to do for my final year project I was in two minds, I wanted to invest this year into my interest in skiing. My focus was on reducing waste and cost to provide a lower entry into skiing or skiing safety equipment as these are issues, I had experienced in the market.

However, upon attending a business course I met Kiptieu Fatty Sheriff, a mother running a meal prep and catering company. This matched with my alternative idea to revolutionise the meal preparation packaging industry.

After being offered a discount on Hello Fresh, in my second year, I jumped at the opportunity for a broke University student to get some cheap food. Upon receiving the first boxes I noticed the sheer amount of single-use plastic used and decided to make a change upon meeting Kiptieu.

Having established Kiptieu and Bongo's kitchen as an industry link I defined my problem statement as:” To design a reusable and recyclable, highly insulating meal preparation delivery box that reduces reliance on single-use plastics. Packaging alone contributes approximately 0.43 kg CO2e per meal​. While meal kits reduce food waste and improve transportation efficiency, packaging still accounts for a portion of the environmental footprint. By addressing this issue, the goal is to provide an eco-friendly alternative that maintains food quality and freshness during transit while significantly cutting down on plastic waste in the industry.”

The goal is to reduce the carbon footprint to match the overall benefit of meal preparation boxes compared to standard shopping, given that meal preparation boxes reduce food waste by up to 40%. The general lack of efficiency related to the insulation is also frustrating. For example, while putting in hours of university work I left a box for an hour and found that the ice was defrosted and the food was warming wasting the ingredients.