Mothers, grow your baby a bottle! A toolkit to grow vegetables at home in the city of Hanoi

Mothers, grow your baby a bottle! A toolkit to grow vegetables at home in the city of Hanoi

Deiman, J.

Brezet, J.C. (mentor)
De Koning, J.I.J.C. (mentor)
Van der Marel, F. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Design Engineering

Master of Science Design for Interaction

2014-03-12

Vietnam has developed very fast over the past decades and is growing both in population and economic power rapidly. Especially the march of a middle-class is pushing the consumerism to a higher level; people have more money to spend on for example luxury items and food. Private food consumption is one of the most important areas with a big impact on the environmental sustainability. Sustainability is however still an unknown concept among the majority of Vietnamese consumers. The main goal of the project developed in this thesis was to provoke behaviour change of Vietnamese middle-class households towards sustainable food consumption with the use of a physical tool. Elaborate contextual research, conducted during a three month stay in Hanoi, was used to identify problematic behaviour wihin the area of food consumption. Throughout the project Vietnamese experts and organizations were consulted to ensure the concept would fit the Vietnamese context. The topic of ‘food safety’ (often linked to the term ‘sustainability’) grabs everyone’s attention in Vietnam.It is and has been a major problem, leaving consumers in despair. Especially young mothers are concerned about the health of their children and family. Although the government tries to improve the production of safe and organic vegetables with laws and regulations, a trustful system has not yet been established. The vast majority of the consumers still buy conventional vegetables that are produced with the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Especially the intake of pesticide residues by young babies during their first two years can have a negative impact on the development of the baby’s brain and immune system. The final design proposed in this thesis is the ‘Bottle Garden’ toolkit that empowers young mothers in Vietnamese middle-class households to start growing safe vegetables for their baby at home. The toolkit emphasizes the importance of consuming safe/organic produced vegetables. This graduation project was executed within the GetGreen Vietnam Project, which the TU Delft is part of. The overall aim of the GetGreen Vietnam project is promoting sustainable consumption among Vietnamese middle-class consumers in urban areas. The outcomes will be implemented in the designed methodology of GetGreen Vietnam.

toolkit
Vietnam
food
behaviour
sustainable

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:4bf8aebc-51b7-45fd-aa3d-55622ab5b947

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2014 Deiman, J.