Beyond food sharing: Supporting food waste reduction with ICTs

Abstract

Guaranteeing food security is key in improving the quality of life of citizens at all levels of society. The recent economic crisis has increased the number of people living in conditions of food poverty, especially in developed regions. Consequently, the reduction of food waste has become an international trending topic. Despite a growing awareness of the importance of reducing waste and managing food surplus, the role of ICTs in this domain is still unclear and rarely documented. In this paper, we describe our almost 5-year experience in developing and experimenting ICT tools to recover food surplus at different stages of the supply chain and we outline the way forward for an integrated set of ICT tools to reduce waste from producers to households.