A Review of Empirical Applications on Food Waste Prevention & Management

TL;DR

This paper surveys empirical approaches in food waste management, analyzing their effectiveness across the entire food waste lifecycle and highlighting opportunities for future ICT-driven solutions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of existing food waste management methods, their focus areas, ICT techniques, and data accessibility, offering insights for future research and applications.

Findings

Identified various methods and ICT techniques used in food waste management.

Analyzed the focus areas and lifecycle stages targeted by existing approaches.

Highlighted pros and cons of current applications for future improvements.

Abstract

Food waste has a significant detrimental economic, environmental and social impact. Recent efforts in HCI re-search have examined ways of influencing surplus food waste management. In this paper, we conduct a research survey to investigate and compare the effectiveness of existing approaches in food waste management throughout its lifecycle from agricultural production, post-harvest handling and storage, processing, distribution and consumption. The objectives of the survey are 1) to identify methods in food waste management, 2) their area of focus, 3) the ICT techniques they apply, 4) and the food waste lifecycle they target. In addition, we analyse if 5) they provide an open access API for food waste data analysis. Based on the literature analysis, we then highlight their pros and cons with respect to applications in food waste management. The implications of this research could present a new opportunity for interested stack-holders and future technologies to play a key role in reducing domestic and national food waste.