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

Everyone spends approximately 6 months of their lives waiting in line for something. A big part of these lines is either because you need to identify yourself or because you need to pay for something. Face recognition could be the solution to make these two things a lot faster and therewith reduce waiting times.

Face recognition is used more and more in different segments. For unlocking your phone for recognizing criminals and in parts of china even to check who is crossing the street on a red light. Now supermarkets are also starting to make use of face recognition technology.

In china paying with your face is already adapted in certain regions. You scan your face and it directly links it to your payment account. Now in the Netherlands Albert Heijn is testing a new supermarket idea. You first scan your face when you walk in. The cameras in the store then recognize what groceries you are taking. And you can pay at the entrance. In this pilot, you still need to tap your bank card to pay, whereas in china it directly links your face to your bank account. If this would be adapted in all supermarkets, waiting for the check out will be over and cashiers are unnecessary.

If you can use your face to identify yourself, check inns in hotels, airports, or companies would go much faster and easier. At a hotel, you could skip the reception and just check in the room with your face. And at the airport, showing your face would be enough to make sure you have a valid passport and ticket. This technology can be widely adopted in different sectors and can make a lot of lives easier.

References:

www.logisticsmgepsupv.wordpress.com/2017/04/04/how-much-time-of-an-average-life-is-spent-waiting

www.facefirst.com/blog/amazing-uses-for-face-recognition-facial-recognition-use-cases