Project Overview
The idea for Dirt was born as a passion project during a break between clients. Since childhood, I’ve had a passion for the environment. As an adult, I’ve always sought out ways to maintain an environmentally friendly lifestyle. As I began regularly composting, I also began diving deep into organic waste and its impact on global warming.
Dirt is an iterative brainstorm on how to address global warming through creating solutions to organic waste.
In addition to the business model ideation, I created Dirt’s logo, branding, and Style Guide.
Problem
Organic waste in landfills is the number three producer of methane gas (behind Fossil Fuels & Livestock)
43% of all food waste in the United States comes from consumer households
I am in the process of consolidating my research into a White Paper.
Iterations of Dirt
A Custom Compost Kit Company
In its original form, I conceptualized Dirt as a Custom Compost Kit company with the mission to make composting an easy, affordable, every-day activity for everyone.
In this iteration, consumers would be prompted to fill out a product recommendation quiz. Based on the consumer’s inputs, they would be recommended a Custom Compost Kit that would address their needs and painpoints based on their living circumstances.
The Custom Compost Kit would be supported by an App that provides tips and tricks on how to properly compost, how to maintain compost, as well as a database to help people identify composting facilities near them.
In support of this iteration of the idea, I created both a video and a website to more clearly explain the problem & proposed solution.
An App to Eliminate Food Waste & Save Money
In January 2020, I began to pursue my Master of Science in Integrated Design, Business, & Technology at University of Southern California. This program is known for being entrepreneurial and innovative, it is commonly described as a “Degree in Disruption". In my first course of the program, I pitched the idea of Dirt and was able to further develop the idea in an amazing team.
Our team included: a Product Designer, a Military Vet & Serial Entrepreneur, a Business Owner, and me - an entrepreneurial consultant.
As a team, we re-approached our problem & solution to come up with a mobile app that teaches you how to save money and eliminate food waste. In this iteration, we emphasized the problem as being two-fold - that 43% of all food waste in the U.S. comes from consumer households, which equals an average of over $1,600 of wasted food per year per household.
The app has two main components:
30 Day Challenges. The app takes you through 30-Day Challenges focused on taking incremental steps to reducing food waste as well as adopting additional minimal to zero-waste lifestyle behaviors.
Consumption Insights. The app allows the user to track purchasing decisions and measure money spent and saved by adopting sustainable behaviors. It will also help the user track food waste diverted from landfill as compost, as well as food waste sent to landfill.
The value proposition to users was to help them save money on groceries, while reducing waste going to landfill.
To illustrate this idea, our team created…
A pitch deck to illustrate the problem, solution, macro environment, competition, and more.
Wireframes to begin scoping the UI/UX of the app itself. Our Product Designer created these wireframes with input from the broader team.
Dirt today…
Dirt remains in ideation. It has yet to do any prototyping or to release to market an MVP. This is an idea I hope to continue to work on in my own time.