Technology can help to reduce domestic food wastage, a new QUT study reveals.
Dr Geremy Farr-Wharton, of the Urban Informatics Research Lab in the QUT School of Design, has studied the reasons people dispose of food and how technology could alter the behaviour, effectively reducing a food waste problem costing Australia billions in dollars annually.
"Research was pretty much based around two specific research directions," he said.
"The first one was kind of identifying why we actually waste food in a domestic setting, and from that we found three core factors," he said.
These core factors were location knowledge; being aware of where foods are in the fridge, the second, food supply knowledge, knowing what foods are in the fridge, and thirdly, food literacy, knowing how to utilise food and whether it is edible.
The second part of the experiment was implementing three design interventions into homes to see how technology could reduce food waste – the Colour Code Project, FridgeCam and EatChaFood.
The Colour Code Project tackled the issue of locating food in the fridge by colour coding food groups to match with a chart.
FridgeCam, a collaboration with the Technical University of Vienna, took photos of the fridge interior whenever the door was opened so that one could check fridge contents when shopping.
An app called EatChaFood tied these two concepts together.
"Essentially you just use it (EatChaFood) on your mobile and it has quite a few features. It would have a virtual representation of the colour code, so instead of just having it in your fridge, it would be located in this app.
It would also show the photos that were provided from the Fridgecam, and the colour coded map of the shelving," Dr Farr-Wharton said.
EatChaFood also allowed users to view photos of individual food items and suggested recipes based on these items.
"It would prioritise items that were expiring soon, and actually visually show you which ones were expiring sooner than others and provide a countdown," Dr Farr-Wharton said.
Queensland State Manager of OzHarvest, Cameron Hickey, said educating consumers about the foods they bought was beneficial.
"To prevent that (food wastage) in the future, it comes back to that education and people understanding life frames of food, safe food handling aspects and education around shopping lists and meal planning," Mr Hickey said.
The three design interventions resulted in a reduction in domestic food waste by improving food location and supply knowledge, as well as educating people on how to utilise their food.