Grow&Store
Cooling groceries with zero emission
A flower/vegetable pot; whose water can be used to refrigerate foods and drinks, with zero emission.
Team: Yasemin Canik, Sinem Öz
Role: research, industrial design
Duration: 1 month (Fall 2015)
Finalist, IDEA 2015
Shortlisted, Red Dot Design Award 2015
“Grow&store” offers users an experience in harmony with nature. It provides cooling for groceries by eliminating electricity use and also to allow growing organic produce by taking advantage of natural processes.
What if a vegetable pot can also be a natural cooler?
Storing spare food in balconies (in winter) or portable coolers are popular in some parts of the world. Also, rising trend of sustainable home planting promises us to a better, healthier future. We have inspired by these two research insights and concluded on a five-step scenario to solve five problems in one answer.
How does it work?
Plant → Water → Grow → Store
Plant → Water → Grow → Store
Enjoy growing your own groceries and storing them in the same pot naturally.
Pour and plant ready to use soil and seeds in the planting area.
Place the fruit, vegetable and other groceries inside the pot.
Place the fruit, vegetable and all other groceries inside the pot.
Water your plants as frequently they need.
Excess water from moisters the sand below the soil.
Enjoy growing your own produce.
Easily carry groceries to the kitchen by putting them on the back side of the lid.
Either wash or serve groceries with the back side of the lid.
Moisten the sand for cooling by using the washing water.
Besides produce, you can also store meat for short periods...
Besides produce, store other food such as meat for short periods.
...or canned foods or bottles, even cans of beverages.
Store either canned foods or bottles, even cans of beverages.
Enjoy eating your own fresh groceries and store them.
Energy Consumption Problems
Fridges must always be plugged in to prevent spoilage.
Fridges must always be plugged in to prevent spoilage.
Fridges use nearly 20% of total energy consumed by home appliances.
Despite their energy use, people depend on fridges to keep foods unspoiled.
Sources of Inspiration
Acknowledging the harm of processed food, people seek the health in nature.
More consumers tend to grow their own fruit and vegetables in their homes.
Since Ancient Egypt, pot-in-pot cooling has been used for natural cooling.
Going Forward
This side project was inspired by one of our friend's own habit of preserving groceries in her balcony. When we did a secondary research on this use case, we were able to find its root back to ancient Egypt.
With this project, I learned the importance of observation for finding ingenious solutions from everyday life to complex solutions such as sustainability and energy consumption.