Sustainable Household Food Management Using Smart Technology

Abstract

The global concern about food security and sustainability has brought attention to areas of food waste across the food supply chain (FSC). According to research although food waste is realized throughout the supply chain, in developed countries households generate the most food waste. Therefore, a key challenge in reducing global food waste lies in the reduction of household food waste.The study intends to investigate household food waste using technology to initiate behavior change towards a sustainable use of household food. Thirty participants were given access to FoodTrek, a mobile phone application developed for this research which was used for alerting participants with regards to end dates of food items in their home. After using FoodTrek for four weeks, there was a 10% decrease in food waste across all products and participants agreed that getting reminders before the food went out of date was instrumental in them using food products before the end date. This gave a positive view to explore further development of this prototype App.