Food waste in restaurants and catering services is one of the problems we have the power to solve. And now it’s even more concrete, as Luke, the Natural Resources Institute of Finland, together with Mediasignal, has developed the Lukeloki app to study and monitor waste nationwide.
Around 70 restaurant outlets across the country are participating in Luke’s waste survey. The survey covers line-menu restaurants, such as staff and school canteens, takeaway restaurants and fast food outlets. Researchers will monitor waste through an app and see the situation in real time. The participating establishments and businesses will be able to summarise their data and consider appropriate ways to reduce waste.
Extensive data collection is needed to tackle food waste
Food waste in Finnish restaurants can be as high as 20% of the food prepared. According to Kirsi Silvennoinen, a researcher at Luke, waste has been monitored in the past using varying methods, and recording and reviewing the data has required a lot of work. The current study will provide data on the amount of waste in different establishments and develop a survey method suitable for catering services. Based on the results, Luke will propose ways to bring Finland’s monitoring up to the level required by the EU Waste Directive. The EU plans to halve food waste by 2030.
The data to be monitored over a three-week measurement period will include the daily menu, how much food is prepared, how much is thrown away, how many customers have visited and how much plate waste they leave behind. The results will be made available to restaurants so they can consider how the menu, some specific food items or even the day of the week affect waste.
User feedback is valuable in development work
Luke considers it important to use the options offered by digitalisation in its sustainable development projects. Mediasignal is a partner in many projects. According to Silvennoinen, the development of the food waste app is working well – after the first trials, feedback was received from users, which was used to refine usability.
The social importance of the issue and the fact that the app works smoothly on tablets and phones as well as on computers have made companies eager to get involved in the research. For high-volume line-service restaurants, waste is of great economic importance, but takeaway restaurants also see economic and reputational benefits in reducing waste. According to Kirsi Silvennoinen, it is possible that the application will also be made available to businesses for longer-term measurement. This way, data collection and monitoring would continue even after the current project is over – and as many people as possible would be able to minimise their waste.
National waste prevention requires aggregated information
Marko Kujala, who leads the development of the waste prevention application at Mediasignal, says: “For a generation of coders, this is a great example of how your own work can benefit society as a whole. Food waste is a waste of natural resources and multiple unnecessary consumption. If it can be controlled through technology, we are proud to be Luke’s partner in this.“
The most important thing in developing such an application is to understand the customer’s goal from the very beginning of the project and the environment in which the solution will be used. For the food waste application, it was essential to determine how things could be reported in practice in the restaurants’ kitchens, and what was the logical way for them to record waste from a work perspective, so that it did not interfere with other work. On the other hand, Luke needs aggregated reporting data to compare the different types of waste generated in very different restaurants.
Another focus is the implementation itself, which must consistently reflect all the findings and decisions made during the unplanned design and specification phase. The application must be accessible and easy to use in the environment and with the devices that are available. This is also where the differences are made – it is not enough to be well designed, you need a brilliant implementation.
