Mobile applications to reduce food waste within Canada: A review

Abstract

Food waste has a devastating effect on the environment, economy, and society. Within Canada, food waste is alarmingly high and on the rise. Technology and mobile applications have been theorized as a potential solution to redistribute food before it becomes waste, raise awareness of food waste, and support behaviours that reduce food waste. This paper critically reviews the literature on mobile applications’ effectiveness in reducing food waste within Canadian society. This review found that mobile applications may assist households and individuals with adequate technology, time, and financial resources to reduce their food waste. However, emphasizing mobile applications alone can place the burden of food waste and inequitable food systems on individuals at the end of the food supply system. Food waste reduction needs to be part of an integrated, multifaced portfolio of interventions at governmental, industry, and individual levels. Mobile applications can serve a role in such a portfolio. Mobile applications alone do not eradicate food waste within Canada and households without adequate awareness, resources, or infrastructure.

Mobile applications to reduce food waste in supply chains: a systematic literature review

“…No general definition exists for mobile applications used to curb food waste, but people tacitly acknowledge that is their function. A variety of names are used to refer to functional mobile applications dedicated to food waste reduction, including food waste mobile applications (FWMAs) (Apostolidis et al, 2021), Mobile Food-Sharing Applications (Farr-Wharton et al, 2014;Harvey et al, 2020), Food Waste Management Applications (Fadhil, 2018), Digital Food Waste Reduction Applications (Strotmann et al, 2021), Food Redistribution Applications (Hanson and Ahmadi, 2021), Household Food-Management Applications (Hanson and Ahmadi, 2021) and FWMAs (Nisar et al, 2021). Nevertheless, all mobile applications designed to reduce food waste could be referred to as FWMAs.…”

“…The FWMAs can be categorized according to food saving methods. Some authors group the mobile technologies into forecasting, waste analysis, redistribution and measure catalogs (Strotmann et al, 2021), while the Brazilian researchers categorized the platforms according Considering supplier and user types, Hanson and Ahmadi (2021) summarize two categories with subtypes: food redistribution (sale-to-purchase, peer-to-peer and donation) and household food management (recipe recommendation, visual stock list and alert system). Ciulli et al (2020) analyze the position of applications in the supply chain and revenue model, namely business to business (B2B), business to consumer (B2C), business to nongovernmental organization (B2NGO) and consumer to consumer (C2C).…”

“…Innovation implies that the new design is based on an original theme and idea, thus not comparable in practice. For example, Pantry was designed to solve inventory problems (Hanson and Ahmadi, 2021;Woolley et al, 2016). Its functions and technical aspects are described in the article and the authors conducted a simple test to verify that it would work rather than a robust comparison.…”

Designing and Implementing the MySusCof App—A Mobile App to Support Food Waste Reduction

“…Mobile apps designed for reducing food waste can be classified into two categories: food redistribution and household food management apps [ 17 ]. There are various food redistribution apps that aim to redistribute food before it becomes waste, such as apps including sales-to-purchase, peer-to-peer sharing, and providing donation [ 18 ].…”

“…Knowledge of available household consumable food, knowledge of the location in which the available consumable food is contained, and food literacy, the understanding of how to use the available foods, are the primary factors that may contribute to prevent food waste at the household level [ 23 ]. Household food management focused apps have three subtypes: alert system, visual stock list, and recipe recommendation [ 17 ]. This demonstrates that a well-designed mobile app may raise awareness of food waste for some individuals and households, support them to change waste behaviors, redistribute leftovers, and change cultural and social norms about food waste.…”