Sustainability, food and big data. We all are aware of the amount of food we waste each and every day (or not). We might think that just a few grams of food is nothing, half a tomato here and a small piece of bread over there……. but when we gather and multiply all those tiny pieces, we end up with an amount that is really scary. We have so many amazing solutions, so close. So why not use them? Big data is definitely something that can help us. Absolutely not the solution, but a great tool to help us on the way to increased environmental sustainability, teaching us how we can improve our planning and efficiency, be more sustainable and walk away from our logistics dependency, but most important of all, help us to reduce the vast amount of food we waste. Despite having different programs taking care of the after-effect of “leftover” food, we sometimes end up with a system that is not so grateful. Therefore, having a plan that attacks the root is much more efficient than a system that only focus on serving the food, cleaning the leftovers and treating the waste; In this case we are not talking about what we can do in the chain between the production field and grocery, that’s a completely different chapter. The focus is more on the level of a system, that would enable us to take advantage of the great technological solutions we have available on the market, for a small cost (at least if we look at the return). As an example, imagine yourself preparing a nice dinner for Christmas. Based on the experience from last year, you know if your friends hate fish or love beef, or if they just push away the potatoes. We all can adjust, by forecasting and planning the portions we purchase and cook based on the experience from the last time, but what about a similar approach in a more “industrial” environment? Let us take as an example a canteen providing meals for 2000-2500 office workers, each and every day, between 12:00 and 14:00. As you can see, the time span is short, so the key is speed, the amount of people is also significant. In addition, among the people all kind of food allergies, religions and taste preferences are present. And of course, serving a variety of healthy and nutritious food, is also something to deal with, if we want to respect the golden rules from the Mediterranean diet.

On a normal day, you just walk in, grab your tray, wait in the queue, pay and enjoy your meal by ending up in the cleaning area returning your tray with what is left on it. Nobody likes sacrificing personal decisions, and we all love getting our food in a friendly and polite environment. Therefore, asking people to measure their food, filling in surveys about what they like or not, is just not the point. Especially when we have tools that can do all that for us. Let us make it a little bit more complicated from an “engineering” perspective. With that, we mean how the whole infrastructure is built up around this. Let us take the following scenario, where we offer: -Salad bar, this is a place where the diner assembles his own salad. Choosing amount and the toppings. -Pre-assembled salads, they are already ready to go, and pre-measured by the staff. -Starters, main courses and grill, we have several to choose of each; they will all be served and controlled by the staff. They will use a small scale to control the amount, so again - no impact on the diner’s comfort. -Pre-assembled desert, this will follow the same concept as the pre-assembled salads. -Drinks, provided from a dispenser - no bottles, to minimize our logistic compromise. In this case, you walk in, collect your tray, head to the salad bar taking a plate – this plate contains an RFID. For the people that are not familiar with this, RFID is a small chip, we can find them at all kind of garment and all kind of items - it basically provides you the information you want to display, once scanned. It is normally hidden and you don’t need to actually find and scan it like the traditional code bar, you just take the item and that’s it. In this case, you can just leave your plate on your tray and walk on. You can find information like: price, production-year, etc etc…the sky is the limit! As mentioned before, the plate contains an RFID chip inserted, obviously, in a tiny compartment that is waterproof and designed to deal with temperature changes and vibrations. (You can choose and compose your meal with whatever dishes you want, no obligation to visit all of the areas) We would have one code for each category, so one code for the plates in the salad bar, one code for the starters and so on… Once you have completed your tray, you walk towards the cashier. As mentioned earlier, the starter, main course and grill dishes are always measured by the staff, to contain always the same amount of food - something that will help us to measure the weight of the food served from the salad bar. Once you pass your tray over the rails towards the cashier, you will find a point with a device measuring the total weight of your tray and items (the weight of the tray and plates are of course removed from the final weight). Passing this point with your tray, the sensor will detect what kind of food you have purchased, and the total weight. As soon as this is done, you go over to the beverage area, where you can serve some chilled beverages at your choice. As soon as you are done with your lunch, you take your tray and go over to the cleaning area. The cleaning area allows you (with assistance from the staff, to make it faster) to put your plates on the conveyer belt, with a special built in pattern, allowing them to go in aligned in a straight line, avoiding them to bunch up, just one plate at a time passing the scanning arch, to finally go through the guts of the cleaning area. Forks, glasses and other utensils, are placed in the designated areas, outside of the belt. As soon as your plates pass the small window with the inbuilt measuring mechanism, the item is scanned and weight measured again, something that allows us to determine the final metric. All this information is of course linked to your lunch card, used for purchasing the meal.

As proven above, we can make big changes, with relatively small efforts and investments. Of course, this idea could be developed (as we will see in the next years, with the scanners that are able to identify each ingredient on your plate), and made more advanced, but it's a good decision, for a first and affordable step in the right direction, helping us to design new ideas around how we perceive efficiency, food and pleasure. All this is not only about environmental benefits; we can find many others. As an example, it would help us to improve the lunch experience, by detecting what people liked and what not, going for one way of cooking or even developing new ways of serving the food, that would help us to stay healthier and more nourished. You can even avoid certain health problems, for example obesity, diabetes etc. by sharing this information with the users, the user can choose the level of granularity to be displayed, of course, always in a confidential way. Another incentive and great way of promoting it among the users of the lunch service, would be a bonus to the user that doesn’t “waste food”. Let us take the following example: you pay full price from Monday to Friday, but by the end of month, if you haven’t wasted more than 5%, you will receive a discount on your invoice. This simple incentive, would make people aware of the high impact their food consumption habits have and valuable contribution they can make to the environment. And all of this just with the usage of something as “simple”, as technology.