Food waste is a huge problem currently. According to the Recycle Track system, 60 million tons of food is thrown away each year. That is around 40 percent of the entire food supply! Some of this food is tossed by households who either had it expire or figured they don’t want it anymore. Of course, people should be more aware of wasting food when approximately 35 million people in America struggle with food insecurity. However, this is not where most of the food that ends up in landfills comes from. The most common source of food waste is from commercial sources. A lot of food never even gets into a household; it is wasted as grocery store or restaurant surplus. The greenhouse emissions to transfer food also has a high cost, and greenhouse gases are often credited for causing climate change.

Enter AI, the newest tool that it seems people are trying to get to solve most issues. A company called Winnow developed a new tool that spies on the garbage cans of restaurants and keeps track of what is being thrown away the most. The software then analyzes this data, and the business owner can then make changes to dishes or menus accordingly in order to reduce this waste. For example, this app might find a lot of a certain entree being thrown away, which either means the dish is not good or too large. The menu can then be adjusted to either get rid of the item, change its formula, or reduce its portion sizes. This also helps restaurant owners know what to buy, which prevents food waste in restaurants.

Another company using a similar tactic is Afresh. However, their focus of study is grocery store waste. Often when you go grocery shopping, the aisles are full of abundant food and drink. This isn’t the best way to make sure food gets eaten, however. Grocery stores also offer a lot of products, and it is likely easiest to just order the same amount of food that has been working, even if it leads to food waste. Afresh’s goal is to reduce this type of waste by giving personalized inventory suggestions based on what is selling and what has been consistently being wasted.

Overall, I think this encapsulates one of the best usages of AI: automating processes and taking the load off of humans. We are not capable of managing several hundred things at once, and being able to automate these processes allows people to focus on processes that require more attention.