As seen above, we have compared our MoneyBin (previously known as DoNotWasteFood) with other existing applications regarding food waste across two dimensions: convenience and accuracy. We found that none of the existing solutions provide good performance across the two dimensions simultaneously and that very few tools are targeted at individuals.
Firstly, the most compelling application we found was created by It's Fresh, a company with the aim of developing technologies to extend the quality of fresh food. It allows users to easily add new food items that they have thrown away and it provides an estimate of how much money they are wasting and how much pollution they are contributing with due to their food waste. However, this tool has limited accuracy because it only allows users to enter a small variety of fruits and vegetables and no other food categories like meats, dairy etc.
Another application was created by the organizers of the "Love Food Hate Waste" campaign in New Zealand. This tool is convenient because it doesn't require users to remember how much they have wasted. It only asks them general questions about their food consumption habits. However, this results in a very vague estimate of how much money the user might be wasting. We think this is unreliable for users to take seriously or act on.
Although the rest of the tools could, in principle, be used by individuals in households, they had retail businesses as their main target segment: Savingfood.eu, Restaurant.eatapp.co, and Flwprotocol.org. These applications could all provide relatively accurate predictions of the long-term financial or environmental consequences of food waste. Nevertheless, they were also less convenient to use because they required lots of inputs from users such as average size of portions and weights which the an average household may not easily have access to.
In light of this evaluation, we hypothesized that a tool that is both convenient and accurate would be readily adopted and impactful enough to elicit an emotional response.
Food loss and waste is a global issue across various dimensions: financial, environmental, and ethical. Financially, it is estimated that the total cost associated with food lost or wasted is 2.6 trillion dollars annually1. Out of this amount, around 700 billion dollars can be linked with environmental waste2.
However, the environmental cost is not solely financial. The carbon footprint caused by food wastage is estimated at 3.3 billion tonnes of CO2 yearly3 or 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions4. Moreover, the volume of water associated with wasted or lost food is approximately 250km3 or three times the size of lake Geneva. Viewing this from a smaller-scale perspective reveals similarly shocking numbers. For instance, one kilogram of wasted apples or beef is associated with 822 litres and a whopping 15415 litres of water wasted respectively3.
The human population is predicted to grow up to 9.8 billion by 20505 and, unless action is taken, the aforementioned consequences of food waste will only worsen, engendering potentially irreversible implications for our planet. This is enough to take a strong negative utilitarian stance against the issue6. Additionally, already today, if it were possible to redistribute wasted food, we would be able to feed all the undernourished population (690 million people7) at least twice8. This mismatch between the existence yet unavailability of resources further highlights our ethical responsibility towards minimizing the extent of this issue
Given the magnitude of the problem, it is not surprising that the United Nations has chosen the reduction of food waste as one of its 2030 sustainable development goals: “By 2030, halve per capita global food waste at the retail and consumer levels and reduce food losses along production and supply chains, including post-harvest losses”9.
To start tackling this complex global issue, we will first make a distinction between food loss and food waste. The former generally signifies food lost in the earlier stages of production (i.e. food suppliers excluding retailers and consumers) whereas the latter refers to food that is fit for human consumption that is not used10. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the proportion of food lost or wasted during later stages of the supply chain (i.e. by the retail sector and consumers) is greater in developed economies like the UK than in developing ones11 (GRAPH). For this reason, we will reduce the scope of the project to focus on the retail sector and end consumers.
If we zoom into the UK context, we find that in 2018, 9.5 billion tonnes of food were wasted, out of which, 70% (or 6.6 billion tonnes) were edible. This is equivalent to 19 billion pounds a year or 25 million tonnes of greenhouse gases. Moreover, 70% of this waste comes from households. This is 6.6 million tonnes wasted (or 4.5 million edible tonnes). On the other hand, only 28% comes from the manufacturing and Hospitality and Food Service sectors combined.12
As mentioned above, households are the group that contributes the most with wastage. Moreover, according to our industry review, most food-wastage calculator tools are targeted towards businesses. In light of these reasons and given our proximity and access to a household sub-segment (i.e. students), we will be focusing on students as our target segment.
If we zoom in even further to understand what causes this food waste, we encounter that 41% of food (by weight) was wasted because it was not used in time, 28% due to personal preference, and 25% because people cooked too much12. These are all reasons upon which consumers have agency and could potentially change if properly motivated. Therefore, we have decided to focus on increasing consumers’ motivation to waste less.
Finally, as conveyed by our industry review, other alternatives have been unsuccessfully trying to balance solutions that offer both convenience and accuracy. Thus, our definition of the problem is:
We will focus on motivating UK students to waste less food, consequently reducing food wastage coming from UK households. In practice, we will attempt to solve the problems of inconvenience and inaccuracy simultaneously in order to motivate students to waste less food.
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- Food and Agricuture Organization of the United naitons. "Food Wastage Footprint: Full cost-accounting" Accessed May 3, 2021. http://www.fao.org/3/i3991e/i3991e.pdf.
- “Sustainability Pathways: Food Loss and Waste.” Accessed May 3, 2021. http://www.fao.org/nr/sustainability/food-loss-and-waste/en/.
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. “FAO - News Article: Food Wastage: Key Facts and Figures.” Accessed May 3, 2021. http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/196402/icode/.
- Our World in Data. “Food Waste Is Responsible for 6% of Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” Accessed May 3, 2021. https://ourworldindata.org/food-waste-emissions.
- United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affair. “World Population Projected to Reach 9.8 Billion in 2050, and 11.2 Billion in 2100 | UN DESA | United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs,” June 21, 2017. https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world-population-prospects-2017.html.
- "Utilitarianism resources" Accessed May 3, 2021. https://www.utilitarianism.com/karl-popper.html.
- FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. 2020. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020. Transforming food systems for affordable healthy diets. Rome, FAO.
- World Food Program USA. “Here Are 8 Facts You Should Know About Food Waste and Hunger.” Accessed May 3, 2021. https://www.wfpusa.org/articles/8-facts-to-know-about-food-waste-and-hunger/.
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. “12.3.1 Global Food Losses | Sustainable Development Goals | Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.” Accessed May 3, 2021. http://www.fao.org/sustainable-development-goals/indicators/1231.
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. "Food Loss and Food Waste" Accessed May 3, 2021. http://www.fao.org/food-loss-and-food-waste/flw-data)
- FAO. 2011. Global food losses and food waste – Extent, causes and prevention. Rome
- WRAP. "Food surplus and waste in the UK – key facts" Accessed May 3, 2021. https://wrap.org.uk/sites/default/files/2020-11/Food-surplus-and-waste-in-the-UK-key-facts-Jan-2020.pdf.