Approximately 13% of food produced globally is lost between harvest and retail, while an estimated 17% is wasted by households, retailers, and the food service sector, according to the United Nations.
Reducing this amount of food waste is beneficial not only for household budgets but also for the environment. Reduction in food waste leads to a decreased need for resources like land, water, and livestock, which helps mitigate environmental impact and can reduce emissions from the agricultural and food industries.
If you’re interested in learning more about innovative ways to reduce food waste, this article will explore various approaches. We will highlight some effective strategies and showcase how green tech companies are taking the lead in addressing the global food waste crisis.
5 Innovative Solutions to Reduce Food Waste
Food waste is a significant problem due to its considerable impact on our planet. The vast quantity of food that ends up in landfills releases greenhouse gases, which contribute to climate change. Each year, approximately 2.5 billion tons of food is wasted. This means we’re generating large amounts of greenhouse gas with just our wasted food.
There are several solutions to minimise food loss and decrease the amount of greenhouse gasses that are released into the atmosphere as a result. Here are 5 innovative solutions to reduce food waste
Solution 1: Food Waste Tracking and Monitoring Technologies
Food waste tracking involves monitoring and recording the amount of food waste generated in households, businesses, and supply chains. A comprehensive food waste tracking system helps organisations identify where waste is produced, enabling them to take steps to prevent surplus food waste.
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Food waste tracking includes identifying sources of waste, measuring the quantity of food wasted, analysing the data, and implementing changes to improve efficiency. Here are some examples of technology used in food waste tracking:
Food Tracking Technologies
1. World Food Tracker: This comprehensive application addresses the entire food system, from farm to fork. As a circular food platform, the World Food Tracker supports individuals, households, and businesses in developing a more sustainable relationship with food. It helps users track their food waste and distinguish between edible and inedible waste. If you are a food producer, signing up for the World Food Tracker can help you plan your food production with sustainability in mind by tracking and reducing avoidable food losses.
2. Winnow App: Based on extensive industry experience and a global presence, Winnow’s food waste tracking analytics platform helps businesses save on food costs while increasing yields from food preparation. With Winnow app food waste tracking software, Winnow Hub, you can gain actionable insights designed to drive meaningful change across kitchens and supplychain.
3. Smart Kitchen Solutions: This solution allows you to choose the level of food waste tracking you desire. It can monitor the amount of food lost the production chain, from storage to plate waste, and is easily scalable and customisable. The Food Waste Tracker of Smart Kitchen measures, monitors, and helps reduce food waste with real-time tracking through a user-friendly interface. Automated data collection is facilitated by the solution’s wireless Waste Scale, and it can be used as an independent online service without needing separate devices or applications.
Benefits of Food Tracking
Food waste tracking offers multiple benefits for both businesses and the environment. Companies throughout the supply chain have strong incentives to reduce waste as it leads to cost savings, improved inventory management, enhanced operational efficiency, and better customer experiences.
Efforts to reduce food waste also significantly impact the environment by lowering greenhouse gas emissions, conserving resources like water and energy, reducing pollution and landfill use, and contributing to long-term sustainability goals.
Solution 2: Edible and Biodegradable Packaging
Biodegradable and edible packaging materials are substances—either natural or synthetic—that can decompose or be safely consumed by humans or animals without harming the environment or health. These materials are typically derived from renewable sources such as plants, animals, fungi, bacteria, or algae, and can be processed into forms such as films, coatings, trays, bags, or boxes. Some examples include starch, cellulose, chitosan, gelatin, alginate, pectin, casein, and whey.
These biodegradable and edible packaging materials provide a barrier against oxygen, moisture, light, microorganisms, and mechanical damage, which can negatively impact the quality and shelf life of food products. They can also enhance the appearance, flavor, texture, or nutritional value of food by adding color, aroma, antioxidants, or probiotics. These materials can be applied directly to the food surface, such as in coatings or films, or used as separate containers like trays or bags.
Types of Biodegradable Packaging
+ Bioplastics: Bioplastics closely resemble traditional plastics in appearance, feel, and functionality since they are made from sugars extracted from corn and sugarcane. At the end of their life cycle, they break down into carbon dioxide and water, thereby reducing your carbon footprint and making the packaging more environmentally friendly.
+ Starch-based Packaging: This category includes materials made from natural starches, such as tapioca, potato starch, or cornflour. These materials often replace conventional polystyrene foam peanuts in loose-fill packaging.
+ Mushroom Packaging: This innovative material is created from mycelium, the root structure of mushrooms, which is cultivated around agricultural waste. It serves as a sustainable substitute for plastic and styrofoam in cushioning and insulation applications.
Types of Edible Packaging
+ Seaweed-Based Films: Made from seaweed extract, these transparent films serve as a healthy alternative to plastic wrap for food packaging. They are dissolvable in water and have no taste.
+ Rice Paper: Commonly used in Asian cuisine, rice paper is edible and can be used to wrap foods, providing a biodegradable and edible packaging solution for snacks and candies.
+ Edible Cutlery: Crafted from wheat bran, rice, or sorghum, edible cutlery serves as an alternative to single-use plastic utensils and is part of a broader strategy to reduce packaging waste, despite not being a packaging material itself.
Benefits of Biodegradable and Edible Packaging
Biodegradable and edible packaging materials offer several benefits for reducing food waste and environmental impact. First, they can extend the shelf life and freshness of perishable food products by preventing spoilage, oxidation, or contamination. Second, they help decrease the amount of packaging waste that ends up in landfills, oceans, or incinerators by decomposing naturally or being consumed with the food. Third, they conserve energy and resources typically needed for the production and disposal of conventional packaging materials, as they utilise renewable and biobased sources. Lastly, they create new market opportunities and value-added products for food manufacturers, consumers, and farmers by utilising waste or byproducts from food processing or agriculture.
Solution 3: Food Donation and Redistribution Platforms
In a world where food insecurity coexists with staggering levels of food waste, food donation and redistribution platforms have emerged as innovative, tech-driven solutions that address these twin challenges directly. These software platforms facilitate the efficient and ethical redistribution of surplus food from donors to individuals or organisations in need. By tackling food waste, these platforms have the potential to revolutionise how society addresses one of its most pressing issues, creating a world where food is shared rather than squandered, and where no one goes to bed hungry.
Food donation and redistribution platforms act as digital intermediaries, connecting a variety of donors—including restaurants, grocery stores, catering services, food manufacturers, and event organisers—with those in need.
Examples of Platforms:
+ Food Rescue US: This platform engages local volunteers to transfer fresh food surpluses from businesses to social service agencies using a web-based app. It does not require a large nonprofit infrastructure and empowers communities to utilise existing resources to help themselves. The system operates in 40 locations across 20 states and the District of Columbia.
+ FoodCloud: FoodCloud connects businesses with charities to ensure surplus food is directed toward feeding the needy instead of going to waste. Businesses can either deliver food to FoodCloud hubs or have FoodCloud collect the food using refrigerated vans. Once collected, the food is counted, uploaded to an IT system, and stored. A food safety system ensures the food is kept in safe condition and is handed off to a charity by the next day.
+ FoodShare: FoodShare is a digital platform, introduced by Food Forward South Africa. It manages logistics for the recovery and redistribution of surplus food to registered nonprofit organisations.
These platforms streamline the food donation process, making it easier for donors to offer surplus food. By providing a centralised hub for donors to list their available food, these platforms ensure that edible resources are efficiently collected. This food is then redirected to individuals or organisations that can use them immediately.
Solution 4: Upcycling Surplus Food into New Products
Currently, approximately 828 million people face hunger every day, which is around 1 in every 10 individuals worldwide. Food upcycling has emerged as a promising solution to the growing issue of food waste. This sustainable practice involves repurposing food waste into new, high-quality, and nutritious products or ingredients, rather than allowing it to end up in landfills.
According to a recent report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), food upcycling is one of the three most environmentally friendly methods to mitigate food waste. Upcycled foods are made from ingredients that would not have otherwise been consumed by humans. These ingredients might have been discarded to landfills, placed in anaerobic digesters, incinerated, or converted into animal feed.
As companies seek to lessen their environmental impact, many are rescuing food and employing innovative techniques to produce upcycled products. Some examples of companies reducing food waste through upcycling includes:
Examples of Companies
+ ÄIO, Estonia: ÄIO uses waste from food, agriculture, and wood industries to make fat substitutes for food and cosmetics. Their products offer sustainable alternatives to butter, oil, nutritional yeast, and more.
+ Barnana, United States: Barnana partners with indigenously-run regenerative farms in Latin America to source bananas and plantains that are diverted from the market. Typically, these fruits are perfectly edible but considered too ripe for transportation to market. From these fruits, Barnana creates plantain and banana snacks, such as chips, bites, and scoops.
+ Cascara Foods, Chile: Cascara Foods rescues fruit pulp and byproducts, including peels and stems that contain essential nutrients for a healthy diet. They transform these materials into nutritional supplements, vegetable protein powders, as well as bars and pancake mixes.
Upcycled food offers an accessible way for consumers to help prevent food waste through the products they purchase. By creating new, high-quality products from surplus food, upcycled products effectively reduce waste. This innovative approach to food waste represents the first consumer product-based solution, making it highly scalable and economically sustainable.
Solution 5: Composting and Organic Waste Conversion Systems
The amount of waste produced by humans is increasing alongside the world’s population. Although managing organic waste presents challenges, recent advancements in organic waste conversion technologies are paving the way for more effective and sustainable solutions.
Latest developments of organic waste composting machines, garbage chutes, compost machines, and organic waste converters are changing the game and reducing food waste across the globe.
For example the latest organic waste converters systems design can easily transform organic materials. They convert food scraps, yard clippings, and agricultural residues, into valuable byproducts like compost, biogas, and nutrient-rich soil amendments.
Benefits of Organic Waste Converters:
1. Waste Reduction: They significantly reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills, thus alleviating overflow issues.
2. Mitigation of Greenhouse Gases: These systems help lower methane emissions from landfills, a potent greenhouse gas.
3. Improving Soil Health: The compost produced is high in nutrients, which enhances soil structure, fertility, and retention of water.
Unwanted or inedible food waste can create breeding grounds for bacteria and diseases, posing risks to public health. In Malaysia, on-site food composters utilise a specially formulated composting enzyme to convert various types of organic waste. This includes garden waste, raw kitchen scraps, cooked food waste, and compostable food packaging, into compost helping to reduce food waste.
These portable composters can be used at home, in food service outlets, or at event sites. They also feature a biotech filtration system that neutralises unpleasant odours.
Conclusion
Several innovative solutions stand out in the effort to reduce food waste, each offering distinct contributions. These initiatives not only tackle the issue at hand but also inspire a shift in how we perceive food consumption and waste management. By implementing these solutions, we can significantly enhance sustainability in our food systems and reduce food waste.
Together, we can cultivate a world where food is valued and wasted food becomes a relic of the past.
