Traditionally, Swedish households have used food waste bags for managing food waste. In Oceanhamnen, Helsingborg, NSR (Nordvästra Skånes Renhollnings AB) in collaboration with RecoLab (the company responsible for water and food waste management in the area) has attempted an alternative solution: the food waste disposer and the three-pipe system. This combination is referred to as the ‘food waste disposal system’ in this work. The food waste disposer solves many problems that people have with the bags, such as odor and leakage. However, it is not entirely problem-free, as certain food residues like bones, certain types of peels, and avocado pits cannot be handled as effectively, leading users to discard food in the residual waste instead.This work aims to evaluate whether the food waste bag or the food waste disposer is better for food waste management, in order to determine whether more areas should adopt the food waste disposal system in the future. If the food waste disposer is superior to the bag, or if it can become so with further development, it will be assessed for design improvements—for example, to enhance its environmental friendliness. Methods such as surveys, previous interviews, and customer reviews have been used to assess user needs, literature evaluation for understanding environmental impact, and examination of the economic costs associated with the two systems to evaluate how users and service providers are economically affected by them.

The disposer has several drawbacks. Among these are that it generates significant noise, contributes to increased costs (such as apartment rent), and cannot handle all food waste. This means that consumers either discard the food waste that doesn’t fit in the disposer or even throw all food waste into the residual waste. Despite this, the food waste disposer has more advantages than the food waste bag and still has room for improvement.

Compared to the bag, the disposer is more user-friendly, requires fewer user steps, is easy to maintain, is appreciated by current and previous users, allows increased nitrogen and phosphorus recycling in better condition, reduces costs for food waste management for the waste management company NSR, and enables the streamlining of waste separation in garbage trucks through the three-pipe system.

Based on the above evaluation, the disposer is considered more suitable than the bag. The main drawback of the three-pipe system is that it is challenging to apply in existing buildings but fully feasible in new constructions. Furthermore, there are several opportunities for the disposer to become a better product through the modularization of its components.