More than 2 billion tonnes of food is thrown away every year by households. One-third of this amount is said to be caused by the food being passed its expiration date. However, the other two-third is because the consumers themselves judge that it cannot be eaten anymore. Upcoming technologies are providing solutions to this problem of wrongly judging and therefore throwing away good food.
Firstly, the startup Ovie introduced SmarterWare. These are accessories with smart tags you can label your food and it will keep you updated about the shelf life of your food. The color of the tags changes from green to yellow to red according to freshness. Additionally, the coupled app will let you know every day what food you should finish soon and even suggest recipes with the ingredients you already have in your fridge. This could significantly reduce the food waste of a household.
Samsung also introduced a fridge with a fridgecam. This camera lets you look inside the fridge from wherever you are. It also sees what products you have and suggests recipes for it. This could make shopping a lot easier when you are reminded of what you still have and what meal you could make from it. Food will be used much more efficient and less will be thrown away. Samsung added a lot of other functions to its smartfridge to make it more of an entertainment tool as well. For instance, you can connect your Spotify and other mobile apps to the fridge. You can also control other smart devices in your house such as the lights or thermostat.
Including technologies in your fridge could help you with reducing food waste. It lets you consume more of the products that you buy which will also save money. However, if the refrigerator really needs an entertainment purpose as well is doubtfull.
References:
www.wrap.org.uk/content/household-food-drink-waste-%E2%80%93-product-focus
https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/11/technology/startups/smarterware-fridgecam-food-waste/index.html
Have just downloaded the app and will be using it frequently! I cannot stand throwing away food, especially not after reading your blog post and some of the facts in it. I used to keep track of all the products I had at home, either on the shelves, in the fridge or in the freezer and I would base my meals on what I had and what needed to be used sooner than other products. However, this did mean that I had to add everything manually, one by one, an update on a daily basis. The apps you talk about seems to give the right solution and enable many more people to install it and try it out, as it saves time, its seems to be accurate and reliable, and it allows you to carry out an attempt on reducing food waste. Win-win in my opinion, if you ask me 🙂
Hi Demi,
I really enjoyed reading the article. It is definitely a huge topic and it’s interesting to see how technology can reduce food waste. I think it would be interesting how this could also impact the industry as a whole, for example restaurants.
What do you think?
Thank you for the insights again
Hi Demi, thanks for this interesting post! I just recently listened to a podcast about food waste and the topic is actually quite shocking. I feel like too many people do not even know that the expiration date only means that firms cannot guarantee the original texture and flavour anymore but you can still eat it. In my opinion, this is also a topic that really should be taught in school. However, I feel like awareness is increasing which can for example been seen with the food app “too good to go”. With already 6 million users, Lidl is now apparently the first discounter that gets onboarded and gives food away at a lower price. In order for apps such as this one, regulations still need to adapt though.
https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/wirtschaft/standardschweizer-app-gegen-foodwaste-holt-lidl-an-bord/story/19769912