Food Waste Hackathon Vienna
48 people joined the Food Waste Hackathon on the weekend from November 25th till 27th in Vienna. The focus of this Food Waste Hackathon was to tackle food waste in households and farms. All outputs were enlightening and the team with the idea to tackle food waste on farms by making it accessible to everyone won. But everyone there was a winner: we had a great time, learned from each other and made connections for the future.
Food Waste Hackathon is not just for techies
The idea and how an app, website or bot can be used to reduce food waste is far more important at our Food Waste Hackathons, than actually understanding how to program. To make sure the ideas make sense from a technical point of view, programmers advise and help on how to implement the ideas. Participants were from different professions and more than 6 countries: Environmental students, programmers, entrepreneurs, game designers, communication managers, Food Sharing activists, food waste experts and marketing experts, designers and filmmakers. The broad mix of professions and people made the teamwork really interesting and the results impactful.
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The Challenge: How to tackle food waste in households and farms?
How to make people care? Food Waste in Housholds:
Food gets wasted along the entire product chain, but most food waste happens in households. Especially younger generations don't appreciate, know food and cooking as much as their grandmothers. There is an economical aspect of wasting food, but in Austria the 263 EUR we waste per year and person don't affect too many of us. So how can we get the generation from 20 to 35 year olds to care about food waste and to realize that if we all throw away "a little bit", it adds up to more than 200,000 tons per year just in Austria?
How to make food left on farms accessible?
Tons of food never leave the fields. Farmers couldn't sell it, so they don't even harvest it. But some or maybe even many farmers would love for this food to still be eaten, that they spend a lot of resources growing. We talked to some farmers, that would be open to let people know what fields are open for after -harvest. So the challenge for the App-Idea would be to make the process as easy as possible for the farmers to enter the information from their side and for interested groups or individuals to find the information. Not an easy task, but if done well, it would have a very big impact on reducing food waste on selected farms.
Ideas to reduce food waste
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On Saturday we all set down together to put all the ideas on paper. All ideas were related to our 2 challenges. (Highlighted you find the ideas that the temas worked on)
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To reduce food waste on farms:
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To reduce food waste in households:
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Teamwork: Working together to reduce food waste
Participants voted for the best 4 ideas that they wanted to work on. For the next 2 hours the teams defined the ideas and made a concrete plan how to spend the weekend developing a solution to present to the judges on Sunday.
App "Drehmoment" to organize gleaning (afterharvest on the fields)
The winning team Isa, Helen, Barbara and Grigor with the help of Dominik worked all weekend to come up with an app to make the food left on fields accessible for individuals and groups like Foodsharing to make a trip to the farm and harvest the food themselves. When you sign up as a person, interested in finding out where to harvest, you receive detailed information on the field and how to get there. You have additionally the possibility to coordinate with other people to drive together. Once you signed up for an after-harvest-event you receive information, what to bring and how to behave on the farm.
Existing groups like Foodsharing would be interested in this option and can be early adopters for this application. If successful and fine tuned it can be rolled out to more organizations and interest groups like foodbanks, hunters, zoos, food coops and later everyone.
For their presentation (in German) please download it here:
Existing groups like Foodsharing would be interested in this option and can be early adopters for this application. If successful and fine tuned it can be rolled out to more organizations and interest groups like foodbanks, hunters, zoos, food coops and later everyone.
For their presentation (in German) please download it here:
Chat Bot "Traudl" to make you aware of what to do with your food
Chatbots are not that known yet, but they are a big growing market. An artificial character is chatting with you, asking you why you came to the website, what you are looking for and giving you options to choose from and even responds to your answers.
How does a chatbot help reduce food waste? Nathalie, Kerstin and Aaron invented Traudl. She is a grandmother and a chatbot. Tailored for students, that have just moved out and are now responsible for their own cooking and shopping often could need the help of a friendly and wise, sometimes grumpy grandmother. She asks what you have in your fridge, suggests you recipes to cook your food. She specializes on bread, the food that gets wasted the most in households and on the age group of 20-35 year olds, that waste food the most of all.
To spread the word about Traudl, the team thought of creating masks, like the one in the picture below and spread them at universities, student parties, student homes, for students to fina and start to love Traudl. Your grandmother in your pocket.
How does a chatbot help reduce food waste? Nathalie, Kerstin and Aaron invented Traudl. She is a grandmother and a chatbot. Tailored for students, that have just moved out and are now responsible for their own cooking and shopping often could need the help of a friendly and wise, sometimes grumpy grandmother. She asks what you have in your fridge, suggests you recipes to cook your food. She specializes on bread, the food that gets wasted the most in households and on the age group of 20-35 year olds, that waste food the most of all.
To spread the word about Traudl, the team thought of creating masks, like the one in the picture below and spread them at universities, student parties, student homes, for students to fina and start to love Traudl. Your grandmother in your pocket.
App TET to share food with your neighbors in a safe way
Many of us would like to share the food, we know we will waste, but we don't know how and with whom. We often don't know our neighbors or not well enough to knock on their door and ask if they want my bananas, that I won't be able to eat, because I will go on a business trip.
TET offers a easy and comfortable way to share food with your neighbors. An app connected with a fridge inside your building (that is paid for and taken care of by the community) makes it easy to know what is in the fridge, so you can plan better. Additionally you will receive information, why the food is given and by whom, so you feel much better about using it, if you know e.g. that the nice lady Maria from the second floor just got those cookies as a gift, but she is gluten intolerant and can't eat them. Via App you can reserve an item, so you know when you get home, you will be able to use it to cook dinner with it.
Some co-housing projects are already interested in such a project. It doesn't only help reduce food waste, it also brings people closer together.
TET offers a easy and comfortable way to share food with your neighbors. An app connected with a fridge inside your building (that is paid for and taken care of by the community) makes it easy to know what is in the fridge, so you can plan better. Additionally you will receive information, why the food is given and by whom, so you feel much better about using it, if you know e.g. that the nice lady Maria from the second floor just got those cookies as a gift, but she is gluten intolerant and can't eat them. Via App you can reserve an item, so you know when you get home, you will be able to use it to cook dinner with it.
Some co-housing projects are already interested in such a project. It doesn't only help reduce food waste, it also brings people closer together.
App "Food Savers" to find good deals near you
The focus was on how to make it more popular to buy soon to expire food at supermarkets. The idea behind Food Savers is to change the bad connotation with the current stickers if you get a discount at the store from cheaper, so less value, to more stars the closer a product is to it's best before date. The app makes it easy for you to see where to find Food Saver Products and to plan accordingly by choosing the store near you with the most products marked with the Food Savers Sticker and additionally with the information what products are available. It is like a treasure hunt for reducing food waste.
The hard thing would be to get supermarkets on board to share the information on the products to be featured in the app, but maybe a supermarket would realize that they can sell more of their stock this way and also brand themselves as a Food Savers Supermarket. And maybe even without the app, but by changing their current reduction stickers with a more rewarding branding, like Food Savers. Who is in?
The hard thing would be to get supermarkets on board to share the information on the products to be featured in the app, but maybe a supermarket would realize that they can sell more of their stock this way and also brand themselves as a Food Savers Supermarket. And maybe even without the app, but by changing their current reduction stickers with a more rewarding branding, like Food Savers. Who is in?
The winning team ... "Drehmoment"!
f.l.t.r. Helen Weihs, Isa Schwager, Barbara Schmauss, Grigor Stoyanov
The jury looking for the biggest impact
Anna Schwarzbauer (A1), Andreas Pertl (VKS), Ulrike Stocker (MA22), Gerhard Zoubek (Biohof Adamah) and Clemens Helm (ChillBill) were our jury, that listened very carefully to the 5 minutes of presentation of the teams and judged on those criterias:
They decided for the winning team "Drehmoment", because the idea was developed in a realistic way, they have a solid plan for the implementation and fully implemented it would have the biggest impact on reducing food waste.
- 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?
They decided for the winning team "Drehmoment", because the idea was developed in a realistic way, they have a solid plan for the implementation and fully implemented it would have the biggest impact on reducing food waste.
Prizes
To thank all participants for their time and knowledge and passion to help reduce food waste, we gathered in cooperation with our partners some great prizes:
1. 1 Week/3 days and 2 days of coworking at sektor5
2. 3 months of free online and automated accounting from ChillBill
3. 3 Solar Charger from A1
4. Coffee from Julius Meinl
5. Cookies from Markthelden
6. Reusable Coffee mugs from A1
7. A case of Nixe Beer
1. 1 Week/3 days and 2 days of coworking at sektor5
2. 3 months of free online and automated accounting from ChillBill
3. 3 Solar Charger from A1
4. Coffee from Julius Meinl
5. Cookies from Markthelden
6. Reusable Coffee mugs from A1
7. A case of Nixe Beer
What happens after the Food Waste Hackathon Vienna?
Food Waste Hackathon Vienna was one of the 5 Food Waste Hackathons organized in this project. One in every participating country in STREFOWA. The next one will be in Italy in March 2017, followed by Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland (first half of 2017). If you want to be informed about the dates and results, make sure to sign up for the "Reduce Food Waste Newsletter" or follow our Social Media channels.
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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 period.
The decision which app idea will be implemented will be made by the lead of STREFOWA earliest in fall 2017.
The decision which app idea will be implemented will be made by the lead of STREFOWA earliest in fall 2017.
What is STREFOWA?
STREFOWA stands for strategies to reduce food waste and improve food waste management in Central Europe. In this Central Europe project ten partners from Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy and Poland will work for three years to improve food waste prevention and management in selected cities in Central Europe to make our cities better places to live for all people. We will do this by testing strategies in 16 pilot actions in 8 urban areas, involving stakeholders and gathering existing knowledge. This will all be fed in an interactive web-based tool that will help you make decisions and provide you with useful tips and strategies to reduce and manage food waste. These tips and strategies will be tailored to the needs of all stakeholders (consumers, retailers, farmers) along the entire value chain. The tool will be the major outcome of this project published here near the end of the project 2019.
Food Waste Hackathon Vienna: A team effort! Our partners were:
