Feast - A Waste Management

This project seeks to minimize the alarming 30% of food waste that is the current reality of the USA.

Inspiration

Food waste has been a big challenge since the 20th century. More than 30% of the food produced in the US is going straight to the trash, regardless of its actual nutritional value and state of quality. On a worldwide scale, these numbers go up to 45% when considering fruits and vegetables. So almost half of all the soil produced goods are wasted, contributing to nothing but a waste of resource and creation of methane while it is decomposing, which is very harmful to the environment.

What it does

This project seeks to minimize this waste developed from the logistic side of the food distribution city and county-related. Collecting the food that can not be sold due to its visual standards or for other purposes like "not being fresh" or during the stocking or transportation, something like a box felt and smashed the content and made the visual not being good enough for sale. Then sending it completely safe to eat food to the facility which we call Feast, where some of the employees are able to arrange and analyze the food throughout a separation process, keeping what can be consumed, and putting in the trash food which is not safe to eat, eg: containing mold and being contaminated. The food that is actually able to be eaten then will be sent to homeless shelters and to the people who are in need.

How they built it

We outlined how we would go about it if we had the time and resources to build the company.

Challenges they ran into

Many times, companies and corporations are just trying to avoid any liability for the food that they are not selling, so many times stores like Wall-Mart and Food Lion put tons of completely safe to eat food into the garbage containers and lock it, to avoid to someone have it and sue the company with the allegation of food poisoning. Same for hospital food, that since are made on a daily basis must comply with the standard of "being fresh", so when the food cools down it is not suitable for sale anymore, being disposed and tied in trash bags. Using complete legal ways, we can at the same time accomplish taking the necessity of worrying about storing and disposing this food out of the hand of companies and corporations and helping the community in need of their necessities while minimizing the waste of resources. Finding a good way to comply with the law was a challenge, so as a good incentive for the companies to help to minimize this waste. During the development stage, we switch project ideas multiple times and we were overthinking implementation in the beginning, when we should have been thinking about Analysis and design. Then we would move on to implementation and testing if we had the resources.

Accomplishments they are proud of

We have a completely legal way to help the environment, the community, and big business and corporations. No one is in a losing side for this project. All that would be necessary is government incentive and people willing to contribute to making this project move forward.

What they learned

That there are already ways in place for systems like this to be created but companies need reassurance and confidence to participate in these programs regularly. Setting up a proper outline can give these people the steps they’ve been looking for. They just need someone to comply with the information and organize a plan.

What’s next?

Take this project to the city of Richmond and other local counties and cities for being able to execute and start minimizing the food waste and environmental pollution

Built with:

• Powerpoint

Devpost Link:

https://devpost.com/software/waste-management-ufk4pj