The United States is at the forefront in the fight against food waste.
In some canteens, an astonishing system is put in place to avoid throwing too much food in the trash.
TF1 correspondents across the Atlantic will introduce you to this innovation.
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Environmental initiatives
In this canteen in Elizabethtown (Pennsylvania, United States) as in so many others, at the end of the service, the plates are still very full. There is a lot of wasted food. To stop the phenomenon, the university which hosts this refectory has installed a strange trash can. On this machine, we find a compost container, but above all a scale and a camera. The system weighs and analyzes everything that has been thrown away. The goal ? Refine the quantities offered to students. “I hope it works and this will force us to throw away lessto be more careful“, assures a student at the microphone of TF1 in the report to be found at the top of this article.
If the young people don’t take care to waste less, the canteen nurses take care of it in the kitchen. Thanks to the statistical data offered by artificial intelligence, the establishment was able to raise awareness among its students. The pineapple, for example, too often thrown away, is marked with a small sign, indicating that it is a “particularly wasted food“The objective? Reduce the quantity of fruit wasted. The university has also decided to reduce the size of the containers from which students can help themselves.”It makes a big difference“, assures Austin Benner, one of the managers of the student canteen.
Winnow is a company that markets similar trash cans in 77 countries. The company says the results are already there. “We are at more than $54 million worth of food saved each yearrejoices Marc Zornes, CEO of Winnow. With all our customers around the world, that represents thousands of kitchens.“Another company also suggests coating fruits and vegetables with an invisible protective layer made of plant materials. A sort of skin on the skin which would slow down rotting. Enough to ensure, therefore, a longer consumption date. long for all kinds of plants.
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In a country that lost more than a billion tons of food in 2022, initiatives to avoid food waste are flourishing in the United States. Another start-up analyzes customer shopping in the fresh sections of stores in real time. The challenge is to allow supermarkets to adapt their purchases and their stocks accordingly. They can thus throw away these perishable products less, whereas across the Atlantic, a third of the food grown is not consumed. In France, this represents 10 million tonnes wasted each year.
