A Graph Algorithm to Eliminate Hunger and Food Waste by Matching Excess Food to Demand

Abstract

Millions of tons of food from grocery stores go to waste every year in the US, while many people consistently depend on community food banks. Having a plan to transport food surplus to the needy will eliminate both food waste and hunger at the same time. This problem is modeled as a bipartite graph with one set of vertices representing food donors with certain excess food of various types, and the other set representing food banks with demand of different types of food, and a cost of transportation on each edge. We create four heuristic algorithms to find low-cost transportation plans that satisfy all food needs, and compare them in terms of plan cost and runtime. We find that the basic greedy algorithm does the best in both aspects.