New Technologies Focus on Reducing Food Waste
Food waste is a significant international problem.
According to a 2013 United Nations report, approximately 1.3 billion tons of
food is wasted annually. The report, Food Wastage Footprint:
Impacts on Natural Resources was the first research study to examine
the impact of global food wastage from an environmental perspective. The
report also revealed that 28% of the world’s agricultural area or 1.4 billion
hectares of land is used annually to produce food that is lost or wasted.
Worldwide food wastage costs an estimated $750 billion annually to food
producers.
Wasting food also wastes the oil and water used to produce
it. Food that rots in landfills creates greenhouse gas emissions.
“All of us – farmers and fishers; food processors and supermarkets; local and
national government; individual consumers – must make changes at every link of
the human food chain to prevent food wastage from happening in the first place,
and re-use or recycle it when we can’t,” said José Graziano da Silva, the
Director-General of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. “We
simply cannot allow one-third of all the food we produce to go to waste or be
lost because of inappropriate practices, when 870 million people go hungry
every day,” Graziano da Silva said regarding the U.N. report.
U.S. companies working on a solution
Not only is food waste a global challenge, it is a domestic
challenge as well. Between 1974 and 2003, food waste increased by 50% in
the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA). Up to 40% of food is never eaten in the United States, according
to the EPA. In the U.S., wasted food represents an annual loss of $250
billion, according to a 2011 McKinsey & Company study.
There are companies that are developing solutions for the
food waste challenge. Co-Founded in 2004 by Andrew Shakman, LeanPath
provides food waste tracking systems to hospitals, restaurants, and other
foodservice companies. LeanPath’s ValueWaste Food Waste Tracking System
allows foodservice managers to monitor food waste. The system enables
foodservice manages to raise awareness among staff about food waste and can
help companies reduce food purchase costs. LeanPath builds devices that
are installed in industrial kitchens that record food waste. The devices
include a camera, scale, and a touch-screen user interface. The collected
information “forces people to see what’s going on,” Shakman says in terms of
the amount of food waste that occurs at the restaurant and foodservice level.
Developing technologies will attempt to reduce food waste
* Fiorenzo Omenetto, a Tufts University professor, is
developing edible patches that can be placed on fresh foods. These
patches would be able to communicate with smart phones and inform the user if
the food is still safe to eat.
* Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have
developed sensors that would be placed on fruit boxes to inform grocers when to
put fast-ripening items on sale.
* Zero Percent, a Chicago-based company, uses an app and
online platform to help restaurants send food donation alerts to local
non-profit organizations.
* The “End Grocery Waste” application utilizes the emerging
GS1 DataBar technology to offer reduced prices for produce approaching their
expiration dates.
By 2050, demographers predict that the world’s population
will exceed 9 billion people. If these predictions are true, reducing
food waste will have to be made a priority.
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