Colour code your fridge, waste less food

Hate food waste?  If you’re like most people, between ‘big cleanouts’ once a ….[fill in your time period here]…, there will be times when your fridge is like an archaeological site: newer arrivals thrust haphazardly onto the surface, obscuring what was there before; increasingly mysterious layers of history languishing beneath, awaiting discovery by the intrepid explorer.

According to Dr Geremy Farr-Wharton, a researcher formerly at Queensland University of Technology’s Urban Informatics Research Lab, (now based at the UK’s Newcastle University) Australians collectively throw away almost A$6 billion worth of food every year.

“Food waste represents about a quarter of all our household rubbish,” he wrote in The Conversation last August. “This waste usually ends up in landfill where it decomposes, producing potent greenhouse gases such as methane.”

The problem of food waste – and how it might be improved if not totally solved – was the subject of his doctorate, completed last year.

“My study showed that households generally have one to two members who do the shopping, but crucially there is typically just one person who takes responsibility for putting the food away. This means other occupants often don’t know where to find specific food items, leaving them unsure of what foods are available.”

To help households waste less food, he wrote, we first we need to understand exactly why it happens.

Understanding the problem

His examination of the problem is really interesting and there’s a strong chance that you will know EXACTLY what he is talking about.

Farr-Wharton says there are three ‘major contributing factors’ to the problem of food wastage:

1. Food location knowledge (where are items stored in the fridge?) A lack of food location knowledge leads to food items ‘languishing out of sight, buried at the back of the fridge’. We’ve all been there: “we don’t have any tomatoes,” when the tomatoes are in fact on a different shelf, behind the yoghurt… Who put them there anyway and why would you put the yoghurt in front of them?

2. Food supply knowledge (what items are available?) A lack of food supply knowledge can lead to purchasing more of a food that we already have. You’re at the fruit and vege market, wondering if there are any tomatoes in the fridge.  You don’t know but you decide to get more anyway, just in case.  Now you are stockpiling. You have two bags of tomatoes which may not all get eaten before they start to deteriorate. What’s more, they are at increased risk of falling victim to a lack of food location knowledge (see point 1).

3. Food literacy (how can different items be used and how can we judge if they are still edible?). If you don’t have a wide understanding of what you can do with different foods at different stages of freshness and how to tell when a food is still OK or likely to cause salmonella,  you are probably going to have perfectly edible food going unused.  That bag of tomatoes from ten days ago may not be up to a fresh salad but is perfect for making a tomato pasta sauce.  A couple of cut half tomatoes going soft in cling wrap on the top shelf?  Throw them in too.

Now here’s another, related complication highlighted by Dr Farr-Wharton’s research:

“My study showed that households generally have one to two members who do the shopping, but crucially there is typically just one person who takes responsibility for putting the food away. This means other occupants often don’t know where to find specific food items, leaving them unsure of what foods are available,” he says.

But what to do to solve the problem?

We could vow to plan meals; be diligent and conscientious in keeping a shopping list on the benchtop to enable items to be added when we notice or think about them; and communicate better with other members of the household when planning to go shopping.  We could study up on how to maximise the shelf life of foods, join the Foodwise campaign and take cooking classes.

Farr-Wharton, being interested in the role that modern ‘technologies’ might play, trialled three ‘interventions’ on real people to see what approach was most effective in reducing food waste.

“It turns out that knowing where food is located seems to be more valuable in terms of avoiding wastage than knowing your whole inventory,” says Farr-Wharton. 

These were:

1. Colour Coding sections of the fridge – This approach targets the problem of ‘food location knowledge’.

   

Coloured pieces of plastic were placed on fridge shelves with each colour representing a different food type (green for fresh produce, red for meat, and so on). A chart indicating how and where each coloured plastic section was located was placed on the fridge door, helping the person to locate the relevant foods before the fridge door is even opened.

2. FridgeCam – This approach targets the problem of ‘food supply knowledge’.

A camera placed inside the fridge takes photos of the interior whenever the door is opened, and uploads them to a secure web page that can be viewed on a mobile device. Householders could view the photos while out shopping, to see what was there and not there – theoretically reducing food stockpiling.

3. EatChaFood smartphone app – This approach targets all three problems – food location, supply and literacy.

The app combines photos of the inside of the fridge with superimposed colour zones, as well as a list of all food available in the inventory, sorted by expiration date.

It also has a library of recipes, searchable by ingredient, that prioritisies items in the fridge that are about to go off.  Another feature of EatChaFood is that it enables participants to share food with other households if they know that a food can’t be consumed and will otherwise be wasted.

The best solution?

Of the three approaches, the colour coding approach was the most successful in reducing food waste. The EatChaFood app was pretty effective too and Farr-Wharton expects this sort of technology to play an increasingly big role in the future.  But at this stage, there remain some technical barriers.  Predictably, the Fridgecam approach – with one broad camera angle – was less effective.  It didn’t help anyone to see items at the back of shelves, inside drawers or otherwise hidden from view.

“It turns out that knowing where food is located seems to be more valuable in terms of avoiding wastage than knowing your whole inventory,” says Farr-Wharton.  “Colour-coding is simple, easy to implement – coloured pieces of plastic are available in most office supplies stores – and can be tailored to your own household’s preferences about where to store different foods.”

Do you have your own strategies for minimising waste?  Feel free to share them here with other readers.

Do you have your own strategies for minimising waste?  Feel free to share them here with other readers.