Sustainable Household Food Management UsingSmart Technology
Abstract—The
global concern about food security and sustainability has brought attention to
areas of food waste across the food supply chain (FSC). According to research
although food waste is realized throughout the supply chain, in developed countries
households generate the most food waste. Therefore, a key challenge in reducing
global food waste lies in the reduction of household food waste. The study
intends to investigate household food waste using technology to initiate
behavior change towards a sustainable use of household food. Code Shoppy Thirty
participants were given access to FoodTrek, a mobile phone application
developed for this research which was used for alerting participants with
regards to end dates of food items in their home.
After using FoodTrek for four
weeks, there was a 10% decrease in food waste across all products and
participants agreed that getting reminders before the food went out of date was
instrumental in them using food products before the end date. This gave a
positive view to explore further development of this prototype App.
Keywords—food waste, food security, Internet of Things.
RELATED
TECHNOLOGIES
A.OLIO APP
A
food sharing App, OLIO (see figure 1)wasstarted by 2 women living on the same
street in London. Excess food is uploaded onto the App with location and amount
of the food. The food is free, and people can communicate via the App to
collect, or arrange delivery which is convenient to both parties. 112
Recently it went nationwide with volunteer
ambassadors marketing the App by word of mouth. While some people find it a
convenient way of sharing food there has been a few issues raised about food
safety and who is liable if there was a food safety violation [11]. Food safety
refers to the handling, preparation and storage of food in a way which
eliminates or reduces the risk of foodborne diseases [11] [4]. While OLIO had
been praised as an App offering free food instead of throwing it away, for it
to be economically viable it requires a number people in the same geographic
area using the App to work efficiently and offset transport costs.
B.TOO GOOD TO GO APP
Another application which is becoming popular is
the TOO GOOD TO GO App (see figure 2) which allows individuals to order
leftover takeaway food at a cheap price from local takeaways, bakeries and
restaurants. Instead of discarding ready to eat food, food businesses upload
the food and location at discounted prices for the public to buy. The App
notifies the user of offers nearest to their location including the times of
availability. It charges a small fee to the restaurants for each sale. Some
food businesses in the bigger cities have subscribed to the App but it
currently shows little presence in smaller towns in the UK.
C.FRUIT EXPIRY
BOWL
Designed by a schoolgirl in Lincolnshire UK the fruit bowl (see figure 3)
is a prototype which uses an alarm alert [12]2 days before the expiry date of
fruits within the bowl. The expiry date of each fruit is programmed into the
touch screen on the side of the bowl. While the bowl might seem a step in the
right direction in managing household food waste, it encourages people to
discard food which is perfectly safe to eat because of quality as all fruits
and vegetables in the UK are labelled with a “best before” date. The “best
before” date label suggest many different features such as decline in flavor,
freshness, color and has very little to do with safety hence people have been
advised that they can still use food after the “best before” date if they are
satisfied with the quality [12].
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