Step 6: Add a Waste Output
What Does Your System Discard?
You've defined your system's primary output - the valuable thing it produces. But every real system also creates waste - byproducts that aren't useful to anyone in the environment or that may even be harmful.
Understanding waste helps you see the full picture of what your system does and identify potential improvement opportunities.
Creating the Complete Waste Flow
Systems modeling requires connecting three elements: the flow, its interface, and its destination:
Create the waste flow - Click the green flow button and draw outward from your system
Define the flow - Click on the flow to specify what waste your system produces
Create the interface - The flow will end in a rectangle (interface) where waste exits
Add waste sink - Create a sink in the environment to receive the waste
Defining Your Waste Flow
When you click on the waste flow, specify:
Substance Type - What kind of waste? (Material, Energy, or Information)
Usability - Select "Waste" (something not useful to the environment)
Examples from our model library:
Cell: "Carbon dioxide and metabolic toxins" (Material waste)
Ecosystem: "Dead biomass and nutrient depletion" (Material waste)
Solar Panel: "Heat dissipation" (Energy waste)
Organization: "Rejected proposals and bureaucratic overhead" (Information waste)
LLM: "Computational heat and irrelevant generations" (Energy + Information waste)
Why Waste Matters
Identifying waste reveals:
Inefficiencies: Where your system could work better
Environmental impact: What your system imposes on its surroundings
Design opportunities: How you might capture or reduce waste
No system is perfectly efficient. Acknowledging waste is the first step toward understanding your system's true environmental footprint and improvement potential.
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