According to the United Nations, 17% of all food produced in the world is wasted each year. This is an astounding 1.03 billion tonnes, which is hard to comprehend.
The weight of 1,03 billion tonnes is equivalent to 2,823 Empire State Buildings.
Food waste is equivalent to 2,823 Empire State Buildings. This food has a huge environmental impact. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases after the US and China.
The area of land used to produce food and then wasted is almost three times larger than the Amazon Rainforest (or 58 times as large as the UK). According to the UN, the food that is wasted could feed 1,26 billion people every year.
Food waste can be solved if businesses, consumers, farmers, and governments work together. Emerging technology is a big part of the answer. Amazing tech companies have developed innovative ways to reduce food wastage. This article will cover the latest food waste technologies.
We’ve divided this list by the point of the supply chain that the company wants to improve:
- Farms
- Shops
- Restaurants/food services
- Households
- Food waste reduction: the future
- Reduce food waste is important
Farms
1. Apeel
California-based Apeel, a company that waxes fruits and vegetables for improved shelf life, has brought the concept to a new level.
Apeel’s invisible, edible coat is made of waste agricultural products such as leftover grape skins used in wine production. Apeel’s coating can increase the shelf-life of fruits and veggies by up to five times! Apeel, according to the New York Times, can deliver bananas that are ripening at different times of the week.
It is a promising technology that can reduce food waste in developing countries, where farmers face difficulties in getting their Produce to the market before it spoils. Even in the West, if it performs as advertised, the product could drastically reduce vegetable food waste at restaurants, supermarkets and households.
Here is a comparison of how a strawberry will age with or without Apeel.
2. Full Harvest
In the United States alone, stores reject over 9 million tonnes of “ugly” Produce, or 25 Empire State Buildings worth, every year because consumers prefer perfect-looking fruits and vegetables.
Full Harvest has created the first B2B marketplace that allows growers to connect with food companies and offload excess or imperfect Produce. The “wonky goods” can be purchased at a 40% discount compared to the traditional distributors.
3. Hungry Harvest & Imperfect Produce
Full Harvest, Hungry Harvest, and Imperfect Produce all fight to save “ugly” fruits and vegetables that are rotting on fields.
They are based in the US and deliver food boxes with Imperfect Produce directly to subscribers. Imperfect Produce says it has saved more than 18,000 tonnes and 1.2 billion gallons of water.
4. Hazel Technologies
Hazel Technologies’ sachets are aimed at fruit producers. They release a powerful plant hormone called 1-MCP. This chemical signals to the fruits that they should not ripen yet. The Hazel sachet can be thrown into the box of fruit by producers. This sachet releases an environmentally safe chemical over three weeks that slows the ripening.
A technology that gives produce more time to reach the market, particularly in developing countries, could have a major impact.
5. Outcast Foods
Outcast Foods, a Canadian company, is doing its part to reduce GHGS and food waste. By working with suppliers, farmers, and retailers, it has created its own supply chains to stop produce from going to landfills. Then, it turns the nearly rejected foods into plant-based products such as protein powders and supplements.
Shops
6. OneThird
OneThird was named so because one-third of all food in the world is wasted. The company offers cloud-based software, handheld scanners, and AI to suppliers (growers, retailers, and distributors) and provides quality assessments to help suppliers reduce waste.
The company is proud of its accuracy in predicting shelf life (using data analyses and other techniques), ensuring that products are delivered in a timely manner from farm to fork. Suppliers can use AI-based cameras and handheld scanners for quality inspection.
7. Wasteless
The UK supermarkets have two main categories of efforts to reduce the price of items that are close to their sell-by dates.
- Reduce their price to encourage people to buy them
- Wait until they are rotten
Wasteless, an Israeli startup, aims to provide a data-driven approach by using small screens that display dynamically changing pricing for each item on the shelf. Machine learning is used to optimize the prices. Wasteless claims that it can reduce waste by up to a third and increase revenue.
You may see more Wasteless tags as supermarkets have recently pledged to reduce waste.
According to Wasteless, stores can expect to reduce food waste by at least 50 per cent and increase revenue by 20 per cent when using their product.
It is a great benefit for any business, but it could be a huge savings for larger companies and chains.
8. Neurolabs
Like Tenzo, Neurolabs reduces food wastage by accurately predicting demand using AI. However, unlike Tenzo, Neurolabs is focused on forecasting sales in supermarkets rather than restaurants.
Neurolabs, a Romanian team, is perfecting its algorithms. They plan to launch their product in the Autumn of 2019. The initial results show that the product can reduce supermarket waste by up to 40%.
Neurolabs offers real-time shelf tracking for supermarkets to identify gaps in inventory.
9. Tenzo
Tenzo is an app for restaurant management that helps restaurants understand their data, aggregate it and use it to make better decisions. This is my baby. After operating my chain of Hummus Bros for several years, it became apparent to me how wasteful this industry is. The technology available at the time made it difficult for my team to schedule their labour or order food correctly.
We founded Tenzo with Adam Taylor, an old friend of mine from my Computer Science days at Cambridge. Our goal was to create the software restaurant teams need.
A key part of this mission was to allow restaurants to accurately predict how much they will sell using a hyper-accurate AI forecasting algorithm.
Forecasting is based on weather data, trends in growth, and the past data of restaurants to produce forecasts 50% more accurate than traditional methods. You can also forecast menu items, which will help you reduce food waste. Tenzo seamlessly integrates with Lightspeed Restaurant POS.
10. Winnow
As the old saying goes, what gets measured gets managed. Restaurants collect little information on the food they waste and why. They have no idea how to reduce this waste. Winnow Solutions products are designed to help solve this problem by allowing restaurants to track their waste.
A food waste technology product from this company is very convenient. It consists of a weighing machine and an AI camera with computer vision algorithms that record the weight of the food and its type as it’s thrown in the bin. (For example, 30 g of steak and 500 g of fries). The staff member selects a reason from the touchscreen above the bin (for instance, a kitchen error or customer complaint) and then throws the food away.
Data from the analysis can be used to help restaurants understand how much food they waste and what improvements they can make. They also tailor their analytical solution based on the size of your kitchen: small, medium, or large, as well as for cafes and kiosks.
