About 1.05 billion tonnes of food were wasted worldwide in 2022, according to the UN Environment Programme's Food Waste Index. That is roughly 19% of the food available to consumers. Households produced most of it, followed by food service and retail. UNEP also links food loss and waste to 8 to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Much of this waste comes from poor timing and missing information. A pallet of yogurt arrives with three days of shelf life left and nobody marks it down. A kitchen over-prepares because last Tuesday was busy. A household buys a third bag of spinach because nobody remembers the first two. Digital tools handle this kind of problem well because they put the right number in front of the right person at the right moment.
Below are the places where they help most, from the farm to the fridge.
Measuring waste with sensors and tracking
Many food businesses still estimate waste by eye, which makes it hard to reduce.
Temperature and humidity loggers in cold rooms, delivery trucks, and display cases record conditions every few minutes. If a compressor fails at 2 a.m., an alert reaches a manager before the stock spoils. Without a sensor, the failure shows up at opening time, when the product is already unsafe to sell.
Barcodes, RFID, and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) tags cover inventory. They tell a retailer what is in the building, where it sits, and how long it has been there. With batch and expiry data attached to each delivery, staff can sell the oldest stock first instead of digging through the back of a shelf. A fair amount of shrink is just product that got buried.
Tracking also builds a record of waste by category, store, and cause. If a grocer finds that bagged salad makes up a large share of Monday write-offs, the order quantity is easy to fix.
Ordering closer to demand
Managers often order extra to avoid empty shelves, and the extra expires.
Forecasting software uses sales history, weather, local events, holidays, and promotions to predict what will sell. A forecast that knows a heatwave is coming raises the order for drinks and salad ingredients and lowers it for soup. Restaurants use the same method for prep. If Thursday lunch usually serves 120 covers, the kitchen portions for 120 instead of 160.
A forecast only has to beat a gut feeling, and it improves as more data goes in. Small operators can start with a spreadsheet export from the till and a weekly review.
Marking down on time
A product close to its date is either discounted or thrown away. The discount almost always wins, provided someone applies it in time.
Electronic shelf labels (ESL) make that practical. A manager updates prices from a central system and the labels on the shelf change within minutes, so nobody prints stickers and walks the aisles. A tray of chicken with one day left can drop in price at 4 p.m., when shoppers plan dinner. The same system can raise prices on high-demand items and keep shelf prices in sync with the checkout.
Paper markdowns cost labor and usually happen once a day at best. Digital labels allow smaller, more frequent adjustments, which clear stock gradually and protect margin better than one deep discount at closing.
Minewtag's electronic shelf edge solution uses Bluetooth 5.0 with encrypted data transmission. Labels refresh together instead of one by one, so a markdown reaches every shelf at the same time. For chilled aisles, the 4.2-inch DS042F model is designed to work in temperatures as low as -25°C. Connected to the store's stock database, the labels keep shelf information in line with actual inventory.
Finding buyers for surplus
Some food is always left over. Surplus-food apps such as Too Good To Go and Olio let bakeries, restaurants, and supermarkets list unsold items at a reduced price, and customers collect them at a set time. Food bank coordination tools work on the donation side. They show a store which charity can take a load of produce today and when the van can arrive.
For a business, food that would have cost money to dispose of earns revenue, and the pickups bring new customers through the door.
Reaching households
Households produce the largest share of waste, and technology can reach them directly. Shopping list and pantry apps record what you bought and remind you to use it, and some scan receipts to flag items nearing their dates. Smart fridges and low-cost fridge sensors report door-open times and temperature, which helps keep food in a safe range. Recipe tools take the ingredients you have and suggest dinner, which turns half a bunch of herbs into a meal.
Date labels cause confusion too. Many people throw out food that is still safe because they mix up “best before” and “use by.” An app reminder can explain the difference at the moment of decision. A notification three days before the milk expires does most of the work, and nobody has to overhaul their habits.
Cutting losses on farms and in transit
FAO estimates put roughly 13% of food lost between harvest and retail. Poor storage, delays, and temperature swings cause much of it.
On farms, soil sensors and weather data guide irrigation and harvest timing so crops are picked at the right stage. In transit, GPS and cold-chain monitors track where a load is and what temperatures it has seen. If a refrigerated truck is held up at a border, the shipper can reroute or sell the goods nearby. Traceability records also make recalls precise, so a retailer can pull one affected batch instead of clearing every shelf.
Where to start
A business can digitize in stages:
*Log what you throw away, by product and reason, for four weeks.
*Put temperature sensors on the equipment holding your most valuable stock.
*Use sales data to adjust next week’s purchasing.
*Set a daily time for discounting near-date items, and consider digital shelf labels if volume justifies them.
*Sign up with a surplus platform or a local food bank for whatever is left.
The data from step one shows where step two matters most, and savings from less waste can fund the labels or software that follow.
