Fruit Bowl with Ripening Pocket

Nowadays a lot of consumers only purchase fruit when it is close to or perfectly ripe to consume. One of the problems this creates is that the window of opportunity for these fruits to be sold in supermarkets is very short before a ripe fruit transforms into an overripe fruit. Overripe fruit cannot be sold and is often shipped back or thrown away, resulting in a very unsustainable and wasteful way of handling fruit.

This is a broad problem to tackle, so this product focuses on reducing climacteric fruit waste. Climacteric fruits are fruits that keep ripening after being harvested. Some examples of climacteric fruits are: apples, pears, bananas, mangos, melons, apricots and plums. As they ripen, these fruits constantly release
ethylene gas, which acts as a natural accelerant for their own ripening.

The product I designed is a twopiece fruit bowl with a ripening pocket. This enclosed space at the bottom of it allows the concentration of ethylene gas released by the fruits to raise. Raising the concentration of the gas allows climacteric fruits to ripen faster and that way the users can control which fruits they want ready for consumption simply by placing them in the pocket, while keeping the rest unripe so that they last longer. This method could reduce the food waste created due to fruits becoming overripe and being thrown away, as all fruits would be kept as unripe as possible before being chosen for consumption.