Roughly one-third of the edible parts of food produced for human consumption gets lost or wasted globally. In developing countries, more than 40% of the food losses occur at post-harvest and processing stages of the food supply chain. This is usually due to a lack of infrastructure and technology for cold chain storage, packaging and transportation. India, in particular, faces many problems with post-harvest food losses, but on a large scale.


The process of evaporative cooling inspired this project. Evaporative cooling is the reduction of temperature resulting from the evaporation of a liquid, which removes latent heat from the surface from which evaporation takes place.


The innovation for this project is the clever reworking of recycled textiles, plastics and beeswax into an evaporative cooling material to help reclaim fruits and vegetables that would have otherwise been spoiled by the heat. The final output, based on fieldwork in South India, is a rucksack carrier that can be used by small-scale farmers in rural, agricultural sectors.