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Conference paper2023Peer reviewed

DEVELOPMENT OF DIGITAL KNOW AS YOU THROW TOOLS FOR HOUSEHOLD FOOD WASTE REDUCTION

Eriksson, Mattias; Sjölund, Amanda; Svensson, Erik; Malefors, Christopher

Abstract

The global food system contributes to climate change, land use changes, freshwater depletion, and ecosystem pollution. Reducing food waste is crucial for sustainable solutions, as reflected in the United Nations' goal to halve food waste by 2030. However, current methods to quantify food waste lack primary data for benchmarking progress, particularly in households, which are major food waste generators in developed countries. Existing approaches include aggregate quantification, manual waste audits, and diary-keeping, but they have limitations such as incomplete data and low participation rates. Quantifying food waste is essential to understand the problem and measure the impact of waste reduction efforts. By applying automated measurement technologies research can advance significantly. The project aims to reduce food waste in Swedish households by developing a sensor-based system using standard components for automated quantification and characterization of food waste. The collected data will be used to provide feedback to households, promoting knowledge and motivation to reduce waste. A proof of concept was developed and implemented in four households. The prototypes includes a digital scale connected to a Raspberry Pi 4 single-board-computer and a camera. Each time something is discarded in the organic waste bag, a photo is taken, and the weight is recorded and categorized in a database. The result from the yearly long test period shows that this is a suitable tool for food waste quantification. However, the expected reduction in food waste was not observed. This could be due to the abcences of a pre-quantification baseline to compare with, or that the investigated households were not subjected to any designed intervention while the smart bins where operating.

Keywords

Quantification tool; Food waste quantification; Know as you throw; IoT

Published in

Sardinia: International Waste Management and Landfill Symposia Proceedings
2023,
Title: Proceedings SARDINIA 2023
Publisher: CISA Publisher

Conference

SARDINIA 2023 – 19th International Symposium on Waste Management, Resourcec Recovery and Sustainable Landfilling, 2023, 9-13 October, Sardinia, Italy