Food Waste Hackathon Poland

The weekend of November 17th-19th, 2017 at the Mercure Wroclaw Centrum Hotel 25 participants dedicated their time and knowledge to #reducefoodwaste in Poland. It was an in depth experience learning about food waste, waste management and app developement supported by our partners Orbis Group, Amrest, Foodsharing Wroclaw, Foodbank Wroclaw, SOLVENA and Abrys.

Many ideas to #reducefoodwaste

After diving in the topic with presentations about food waste in Hungary and Europe, UX design and STREFOWA, the participants took some time to brainstorm on app ideas for the presented challenges.

How can technology help hotels reduce food waste? (presented by Mercure Hotel)
How can we support a system for composting of organic waste in households? (Presented by SOLVENA)
How can we help food banks in Poland save more food from being wasted and distribute it to people in need? (presented by Federacja Polskich Banków Żywności and Bank Żywności we Wrocławiu)
How to improve the sharing of food in Poland? (presented by foodsharing Wroclaw)

These ideas were developed during the brainstorming

Ideas to solve the home composting challenge:

awareness campaign in public transportion in Wroclaw
providing the bins and composters from the city
common composting bin for apartment complexes by city
cooperation with companies that need compost like city garden companies

Ideas how to reduce food waste in hotels?

monitoring of guest food preferences
messurement of incoming and wasted food regional overview
awareness raising at guest levels
hotels have their own food brands (honey, herbs,...)
composting in hotels
guests have to pay for leftover food
smaller plates
reservation for meals (order your food)
don’t offer buffets

Idea how foodbanks can improve their logistics?

provide foodbanks with a system that saves time to monitor inventory, for example with an QR Code

Ideas how to help foodsharing reduce more food waste in Wroclaw?
create app that helps individuals to find surplus food easily
change the attitude from feeling ashamed to feeling like a food saver hero

The Jury

The jury decided on these criteria who will win the Food Waste Hackathon in Wroclaw and didn't take the decision lightly.

How much impact would it have on food waste?
How well thought out is the idea and possible implementation?
How is the visible output/presentation from the weekend?

Jury Members

Katarzyna Blachowicz (Abrys)
Iwona Janosiewicz (Orbis Hotel Group)
Jacek Banel (Solvena)
Ewelina Jabłońska – Gryżenia (AmRest)

The jury members brought a lot of nice prizes for the winners!

Prizes

The prize pool for the winning teams is:

an attractive hotel voucher from Orbis Group
4000 złoty from AmRest (KFC)
a yearly subscription for these 5 magazines from ABRYS : "Energia i Recykling", "Przegląd Komunalny", "Zieleń Miejska", "Wodociągi-Kanalizacja"
a spot for an internship at Solvena Management Systems

f.l.t.r.: Ewelina Jabłońska – Gryżenia, Katarzyna Blachowicz, Iwona Janosiewicz, Jacek Banel

One of the ideas from the 5 Food Waste Hackathons (Austria, Italy, Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland) will be finished and implemented by STREFOWA and spread in our networks, possible the entire EU and especially all our partner countries. The App will be part of the non-profit project STREFOWA. It will be for free to use and also the code open source. The team with their names will be acknowledged in the application. All teams will be invited to pitch their ideas at one of the STREFOWA conferences later in the project. The decision which app idea will be implemented will be made by the lead of STREFOWA earliest in 2018.

Open Source

Ideas developed at STREFOWA Food Waste Hackathons are open source (they are a teameffort, based on valuable information from the experts presenting the challenges). The ideas will be shared on this website and the goal is to have them implement in as many places as possible. One idea from all 5 STREFOWA Food Waste Hackathons will be implemented by STREFOWA in 2018. A STREFOWA Food Waste Hackathon is not a start-up competition and is not the best place to share secret ideas. STREFOWA Food Waste Hackathons are about creating an environment to make innovation against food waste happen, for everyone to develop further.

Location and Food by Hotel Mercure Wroclaw

The Food Waste Hackathon Wroclaw was held at the Mercure Wroclaw Centrum. Orbis Hotel Group provided the Food Waste Hackathon with the location and the food for the event. It was impressive and inspiring to see how a 4 star hotel is putting a lot of effort to #reducefoodwaste. We enjoyed a best practice buffet, where they used surplus food in smoothies, and made chips out of them. Everything was served in small single portions, which the hotel found that prevents foodwaste. Also for our warm food, the chefs were very creative, using old bread for croutons for the soup and what wasn't finished we got as salat decoration. And many great examples more.

See all photos of the event at Facebook

Solutions to #reducefoodwaste in Poland

Team Foodbank Challenge:

This team created a system for donors to electronically add input of the amounts of food for donation. It is like an online shop for donated food with the aim to reduce the time needed in foodbanks to keep stock of the food to distribute the information.

Take a look at the entire presentation

Team Home composting challenge (Kubelek Kubus: Little Jacob Bin)

The winning team created a website to educate people about the potential of reusing food waste in home composting, uniting communities to be more ambitious about food waste, reducing the amount of food waste in municipality waste.

Take a look at the entire presentation

Team Foodsharing (Bla Bla Food)

An app for individuals to share food with each other. It is like an onlineshop where everything is for free. Where people can add and take food and be food saving heros.

Take a look at the presentation

Team Hotel Challenge

An app to help the hotel to reduce food waste by asking the guest to download an app when they connect with the WIFI to use this hotel app to share their food preferences with the hotel, so that they can plan accordingly. Guest will receive rewards for sharing the information with the hotel.