Abstract
Of all food wastes, that which is produced from the household is the most damaging in terms of environmental and economic impact. Many efforts have been made to quantify and analyse the reasons for and problems associated with household food waste generation which has led to the development of both technical solutions and behavioural interventions (including education and awareness) to try and reduce its generation. In this work a novel solution is proposed and developed which connects food providers and consumers, enabling more intelligent food planning, purchasing and consumption. A data driven Recipe Suggestion tool, supported by a Particle Swarm Optimisation (PSO) engine, is described for the first time. Recipes and associated ingredients are suggested for users which consider their preferences, remaining food items already held at home, expiry dates and minimum pack sizes. The tool is applied to a simulated case study to demonstrate its applicability and potential to generate a range of useful waste metrics. Results of the application of the tool, in terms of optimization capabilities and computation time, show encouraging potential for platform integration. The suitability of the tool to be incorporated into modern e-commerce systems is discussed.
Highlights
About one third of food produced globally never enters anybody’s mouth (FAO, 2011; IMechE, 2013); this 1.3 billion tonnes of food ends up as either food loss or food waste somewhere between the farm and the consumer
It has been reported that the composition of food waste varies across the world with household food waste (HFW) dominating the proportion of food waste generated in developed economies (IMechE, 2013) confidence of estimates across different regions varies somewhat (UNEP, 2021)
The Recipe Suggestion tool is used to evaluate the HFW associated with a particular scenario of consumer demand
Summary
About one third of food produced globally never enters anybody’s mouth (FAO, 2011; IMechE, 2013); this 1.3 billion tonnes of food ends up as either food loss or food waste somewhere between the farm and the consumer. The challenge of reducing global food waste has been further highlighted in the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Target 12.3 aiming to half the global per capita food waste by 2030 (FAO, 2018). It has been reported that the composition of food waste varies across the world with household food waste (HFW) dominating the proportion of food waste generated in developed economies (IMechE, 2013) confidence of estimates across different regions varies somewhat (UNEP, 2021). By way of example, in the United Kingdom about two-thirds of postfarm food waste is generated at the household level (Jeswani et al, 2021), and 70% of this HFW is reported to be avoidable or possibly avoidable (WRAP, 2020). The UNEP Food Waste Index Report, 2021, has highlighted many difficulties with measuring HFW, especially in lower income countries, and has indicated that the problem could be much more severe than is currently understood
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