Framed’s goal is to reduce the amount of wood waste sent to landfills by repurposing the wood to create unique, customizable picture frames. Overall, the problem that we are looking to address is wood waste. In particular, we are addressing C&D waste, furniture waste, and pallet waste. Wood waste is the second-largest component of construction and demolition waste. It has been estimated that C&D generates roughly 36.4 million tons of wood waste annually - 29.7 million tons from demolition and 6.7 million tons from construction. Addressing both the huge amount of wood waste through construction or unbought furniture and the difficulty college students face to find decorative items for their rented living space that don’t damage the walls, our plan is to repurpose the wood waste to build customizable frames.

 

The initial population that we want to focus on is people within UIUC’s Campustown and the Urbana-Champaign communities. In particular, UIUC students living in dorms, apartments, or senior houses and individuals living in rental spaces in Urbana and Champaign. Eventually, we would be interested in expanding our target population to other college universities and/or people living in rentals around the United States and then the world. This semester, we are focused on providing a solid structure on our prototyping and product development to properly ascertain the market value of our product.