Though food waste is a problem that could be simply solved through consumption changes and more awareness, there are a lot of existing technologies that could help further reduce food waste.
Let’s look at some of these amazing innovations from companies that you could look into to reduce your community’s food waste:
Wasteless provides an all-in-one solution to reduce food waste and increase perishable food profit by dynamically pricing items with a shorter expiration date at their optimal price point. Their proprietary pricing engine employs reinforcement learning, a branch of machine learning, in order to train the model to learn how consumers respond to dynamic pricing in order to find the optimal discounting policy. Through the use of technology, wasteless is able to answer questions like when is the next shipment of inventory set to arrive, how do consumers respond when there is little inventory left on the shelf, how exactly do consumers trade off freshness with discounts?
Wasteless is a win-win situation for all parties. Not only can they help supermarkets increase revenue by selling products that would otherwise go to waste, they are also offering better price options for consumers as well as increasing freshness. Perhaps most important of all, they are also helping mitigate the impacts of food waste on the environment.
Company Spotlight - Wasteless
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Lomi is an eco-friendly kitchen device designed to contribute positively to the environment. This innovative electric composter efficiently breaks down food scraps and organic materials, transforming them into nutrient-dense soil suitable for composting or environmentally conscious disposal. Particularly beneficial for apartment dwellers seeking to compost, Lomi additionally offers a Grow mode function, generating soil ideal for nurturing your garden.
This unique appliance breaks down food waste into nutrient-rich dirt, therefore mitigating greenhouse gas emissions and accelerating the composting process. Not only is it great for the environment, you could also earn points and redeem them for ‘prizes’ Lomi offers.
Apeel presents a natural solution for enhancing the shelf life of fruits and vegetables. Composed of compounds sourced from peels, seeds, and pulps, this coating forms an invisible, edible barrier that retains moisture while preventing oxygen ingress, thereby protecting the plant’s natural ability to protect against environmental stress. By applying Apeel, produce can sustain freshness, nutritional value, and flavor for twice the duration compared to untreated counterparts.
Each plant on our planet possesses a natural protective peel. Known as the cuticle layer, this outermost covering serves to retain moisture while permitting essential breathing for the plant without desiccation. Apeel reinforces this innate defense mechanism by applying a minuscule additional layer that mimics the natural structure found on fruits and vegetables, safeguarding their freshness post-harvest.
Fruits and vegetables treated with Apeel last twice as long as those without, affording consumers extended access to perishable favorites and reducing landfill contributions.
Neurolabs ReShelf is an advanced retail solution designed to oversee product placement on store shelves. Leveraging cutting-edge technology such as AI and Machine Learning models, it analyzes consumer purchasing trends and monitors shelf life, empowering store managers to make informed decisions regarding product stocking. This proactive approach ensures that popular items remain available while minimizing wastage of overstocked goods. Neurolabs ReShelf has an automated shelf monitoring capability, which can forecast sales patterns, aiding markets and retailers in maintaining optimal inventory levels.
Kuri is a climate-friendly cooking app created by Baptiste Magaluti. As part of the initial setup, the app guides users through their dietary preferences, enabling it to filter out any items that don't align with their eating habits. This prevents the common issue many apps face where users end up feeling out of place, like a vegetarian in a steakhouse. Moreover, the app considers seasonal availability in your area, simplifying seasonal cooking.
This app helps you decide your next meal according to your dietary preferences and restrictions, your stock in the fridge, and the seasonal ingredients. Also, it calculates your carbon footprint and helps you reduce it without compromising the deliciousness.
This application assists users in selecting their next meal based on their dietary preferences and restrictions, the ingredients available in their fridge, and seasonal produce. Additionally, it calculates users' carbon footprints and offers suggestions to reduce environmental impact without sacrificing flavor .The app even transforms recipes into shopping lists, facilitating collaborative grocery shopping experiences. Whether it's for a family or a group of housemates cooking together, Kuri makes it effortless to turn dinner preparation into a shared activity.
Based in Oslo, Norway, Kebony stands out as a prominent player in the global modified wood industry. Diverging from the typical focus of many food waste startups, Kebony utilizes food waste to produce softwood. Despite the inherent differences between softwood and hardwood, Kebony has developed an award-winning technology capable of transforming food industry waste into a material that mimics the qualities of tropical hardwood—known for its strength, durability, and resilience. Through this innovation, Kebony not only repurposes food waste effectively but also contributes to forest conservation efforts and significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
They use anaerobic digestion technology to recycle many city, company, or institution's organics to create clean energy and healthy living soils. This is a particularly interesting technology so let’s learn about it in detail.
In essence, anaerobic digestion is a biological process that breaks down organic matter in the absence of oxygen, typically occurring in environments such as landfills, swamps, and the digestive systems of animals. This process involves a series of microbial reactions carried out by a diverse group of anaerobic microorganisms, primarily bacteria and archaea.
Here's how anaerobic digestion typically works:
The biogas produced during anaerobic digestion can be captured and utilized as a renewable energy source for heating, electricity generation, or vehicle fuel. Additionally, the remaining digestate, which is the solid and liquid residue after digestion, can be used as a nutrient-rich fertilizer for agriculture or soil amendment. Anaerobic digestion thus offers both environmental and economic benefits by treating organic waste, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and producing valuable renewable energy and fertilizer resources.
Play video:
Four Fascinating Ways to Turn Food Waste into Fuel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alljc5elqqw
For further exploration and reading, here is an article that covers some potential solutions in all aspects of the food value chain including farms, retail, residential, and manufacturing: https://www.nrdc.org/bio/nina-sevilla/preventing-wasted-food-across-food-supply-chain
