Reducing food waste with IoT

Client: Vaiva Kalnikaitė, Dovetailed <vaiva@dovetailed.io>

15 million tonnes of food are thrown away every year in UK alone and almost 50% of this comes from our homes. It seems likely that Internet of Things (IoT) devices, mobiles and wearables could be used to detect and avoid some causes of this problem, for example by sharing surpluses or reducing stockpiles by sharing “buffers” of food between neighbours. Your task is to recover some traditions of sharing food among neighbours, with a community platform that enhances social connections through sharing food. Your client will provide a prototype of one novel IoT device - “Spare Bite” (www.sparebite.com), but you should also consider the ways that other connected devices may contribute - iPads used in the kitchen for online references, or even the infamous Internet Fridge.