Originally from Geneva, Kosuke Araki is a Japanese designer living in Tokyo. He studied at Tama Art University Tokio and he also has a MA degree in Design Products from Royal College of Art London. Kosuke Araki interned at Nike and his projects were displayed in various exhibitions. His work covers different areas, questioning the values and sensitivities of our age, dealing with consumerism and the process of rapid modernisation.

Kosuke Araki – FOOD WASTE WARE -in Kitchen (2013)

With his project Food Waste Ware, Kosuke Araki gives new life to food waste. Food waste is a global problem and Araki puts it in a very personal way. And it’s not only about sustainability. Designer uses food waste from local markets, shops and his own kitchen to create a wide range of tableware – food waste bowls crafted from rotten vegetables, leftover bones and even tea bags. He also delivers a booklet called A New Life for Food Waste that teach us how to replicate the results at home.

These photos show how much food is discarded from food markets, shops or kitchens on a daily basis. Araki asked food shops to put aside some organic waste for him so he went to collected the pieces after the closure. According to one report, even people who believe that their household wasted no food were shown to be discarding 88 kg of avoidable food waste per year. As he says:

“I could imagine that most of us are unaware of the amount of food we throw away, so I took a one-month record of food waste from my kitchen. I am living alone and cook only for dinner, but even so, every week I could have around 1 kg. Every day, food waste is produced at a huge industrial scale as well as a small domestic scale. Although some of it is processed into something useful, most is disposed of in landfills, contributing to environmental problems.”

The idea of Araki’s project was to revive wasted lives by giving them new roles. Designing the set of bowls, he researched alternative ways of reshaping the material trying to avoid the usage of a silicone mould, which is derived from petroleum, and to make all the process done only by natural materials. Aiming to enable users to design their own tableware out of the food waste they produce daily, he also invites the audience to become more aware of the amount of food waste they generate day by day.

Kosuke Araki – food waste bowls + manual