What Are The Ways to Reduce Food Waste?

What Are The Ways to Reduce Food Waste?What Are The Ways to Reduce Food Waste?
Can IoT help retailers curb food wastage at the store level?
What is IoT?
IoT is an extensive network of interrelated computing devices, digital and mechanical machines, objects, animals, or even people that are equipped with unique identifiers (UIDs). Everything that is connected to this network is capable of sharing data that contains information like the current location of the device as well as its location.
For instance, all devices that you use every day (smartphones, tablets, desktop computers, laptops, automobiles, electrical appliances, etc.) utilize several forms of technology that enable them to constantly transfer their data in one single IoT platform. Once the IoT platform receives the data, it automatically integrates all the information collected from various sources. This is where analytics comes in, where essential information is extracted from the stored data to be analyzed and used for multiple purposes.
A growing problem that continues to succumb to many food retailers today is no other than food waste. The food industry in particular has already lost billions of dollars annually due to the waste of certain perishable items. Such a problem may even make things worse by producing tons worth of greenhouse gases which is not suitable for the environment. The good thing is, IoT can be a useful tool to minimize if not wholly, prevent food waste. Here’s how:
IoT – Can It Be Used to Reduce Food Waste?
Increased monitoring in food processing plants
Using cameras in food processing plants such as those that produce meat can install digital cameras throughout the area to assess the performance of food operators. The data from the footage received can be used for giving feedback so that the operator can accomplish a better job the next time around. This helps to avoid discrepancies in every task related to food processing like food waste.
Keep track of fruit respiration rates and freshness
If a retail business is earning a considerable amount of revenue from selling fruits, there is a good chance that packages that arrive at the store contain fruit products with varying freshness and respiration rates. Stuffing fruit products with different conditions in a single packaging is not a good idea if limiting food waste is the main priority. But by using IoT sensors, fruit sellers can customize their packaging tasks based on the fruit respiration rates and freshness so that monitoring shelf life and reducing waste can be done with ease.
Prevent food waste with ESLs
The use of  Electronic Shelf Labels  or ESLs by a growing number of companies all over the world makes them a major contributor to the popularity of IoT-based technologies. Perhaps the best way to impede the loss of profit from wasted food products is by implementing pricing strategies that can solve a bunch of other problems in daily business operations. While traditional price tags of the past are only designed for displaying prices on products, ESL tags can do much more. The product data showed by ESLs are digital and can be changed and updated in real-time, as they are all connected to a central server that enables them to be inputted on an IoT platform.
Contact us  today if you are interested to learn about SOLUM ESL Solutions and how we can help your retail business take advantage of wireless connectivity to improve your workforce productivity as well as food waste management.
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