While food waste may seem like a distant problem, it affects households, small businesses, and large corporations alike, meaning everyone along the supply chain is affected by this growing issue.
In the United States alone, 30–40 percent of the food supply is wasted, contributing to a range of environmental, economic, and social implications.
In fact, food waste data shows us that an estimated 40 million tons of wasted food were generated in the food and beverage manufacturing and processing sectors in the United States in one year. While this is just a glimpse into the problem, it highlights the urgent need for more effective waste management strategies across the supply chain.
To address growing concerns, advances in technology offer new opportunities to reduce waste at the source and improve sustainability. More specifically, food waste management using IoT has emerged as a powerful tool for monitoring and optimizing the supply chain.
Keep reading to learn how IoT can be used in waste management, sectors that can benefit from the adoption of new technologies, and challenges that businesses may face during this transition.
Key Takeaways
- Businesses that use IoT sensors and devices can easily monitor various aspects of food storage, handling, and waste disposal in real-time, helping them track the temperature, humidity, expiration dates, and stock levels of their products.
- One of the biggest ways IoT-based food waste management helps businesses minimize food waste is by predicting demand fluctuations, enabling them to adjust orders and avoid overproduction.
- IoT enhances food safety by tracking the freshness and shelf life of products, ensuring that food is consumed within safe limits, and reducing the risk of foodborne illnesses.
- A large range of businesses can enhance food waste management using IoT, including grocery stores, restaurants, food manufacturers, and those in the hospitality sector. Benefits of IoT adoption include cost reduction, enhanced sustainability, regulatory compliance, improved operational efficiency, and more informed decision-making.
What is IoT?
IoT, or Internet of Things, is a network of interconnected devices that collect and share data, enabling real-time monitoring and control. This enables IoT to automate processes, reduce manual errors, and enhance operational efficiency. In food waste management, IoT provides powerful insights that help businesses analyze different aspects of their operations, equipping everyday objects with sensors and connectivity to increase efficiency.
Introduction to IoT in Food Waste Management
IoT in food waste management is being increasingly leveraged throughout the supply chain, helping businesses better understand how to manage food waste more efficiently.
One of IoT’s biggest advantages is its ability to empower businesses to make data-driven decisions. The devices within IoT networks generate vast amounts of data, which can be analyzed to reveal patterns, trends, and behaviors. In addition, IoT’s ability to automate processes helps reduce waste, enhance efficiency, and improve food safety—all of which provide huge benefits to food-related establishments.
As we’ll see below, there are multiple ways that businesses can implement IoT-based food waste management, such as using real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, and automated alerts to improve sustainability efforts.
The Challenges of Food Waste Management in Commercial Settings
Before exploring how businesses can improve food waste management using IoT, let’s discuss the common causes of food waste in commercial sectors. This includes:
- Overproduction: Overproducing food is a huge issue in the supply chain, often due to inaccurate forecasting, strict grading and sorting processes, and a lack of real-time data to adjust production levels effectively.
- Lack of accurate waste tracking systems: Without an accurate food waste tracking system, businesses struggle to recognize where waste is being generated, making it difficult to implement effective strategies to prevent surplus food waste.
- Poor inventory management: Common issues in food inventory management include inefficient inventory rotation practices, spoilage due to improper storage, and the overordering of products due to a lack of accurate data.
- Limited real-time data: Without access to real-time data, businesses lack proper control over their stock, preventing them from addressing issues quickly to reduce waste.
These inefficiencies all contribute to higher operational costs, including waste disposal fees, lost revenue from unsold products, and the additional costs of handling and transporting waste.
Food Waste Management Using IoT: How Does It Work?
There are many ways that businesses can implement IoT-based food waste management, including real-time monitoring and data collection, predictive analytics, automated alerts, and enhanced food safety. Keep reading to explore each approach in more detail.
Real-Time Monitoring and Data Collection
Businesses that use IoT sensors and devices can easily monitor various aspects of food storage, handling, and waste disposal in real-time. These sensors can be implemented to track temperature, humidity, expiration dates, and stock levels, providing businesses with immediate insights that help prevent waste. Overall, the biggest advantage of real-time data collection is its contribution to proactive decision-making; for instance, distributors can respond quickly to inaccurate transportation conditions and retailers can reorder stock based on actual needs.
Predictive Analytics and AI Integration
When integrated with AI and machine learning algorithms, IoT devices can analyze historical data to help businesses identify patterns and predict future outcomes. This better equips them to optimize internal processes, such as inventory levels, production schedules, and supply chain management. One of the biggest ways this helps businesses minimize food waste is by predicting demand fluctuations, enabling them to adjust orders and avoid overproduction.
Automated Alerts and Workflow Optimization
IoT systems automate alerts so that staff can address potential issues quickly, therefore helping businesses optimize processes and minimize losses. This feature can be leveraged in many ways, such as alerting staff when critical waste thresholds are reached, when improper storage conditions are detected, and more. In addition to helping businesses manage food and waste, IoT can be integrated with inventory management systems to streamline processes like reordering or adjusting production based on real-time data.
Enhanced Food Safety
A huge benefit of IoT adoption is its ability to enhance food safety. By monitoring storage conditions, such as temperature and humidity, IoT helps prevent spoilage and contamination. IoT systems can also track the freshness and shelf life of products, ensuring that food is consumed within safe limits, thereby reducing the risk of foodborne illnesses and preventing food recalls.
Sectors that Benefit from IoT Food Waste Management
Various industries can benefit from IoT food waste management, including:
- Grocery stores: Large amounts of products are wasted at grocery stores due to a lack of stock rotation, cross-contamination, cold chain mismanagement, and inefficient inventory and stock management. By leveraging IoT systems, supermarkets can better identify waste patterns and improve inventory planning.
- Restaurants: Wasted food in restaurants is a huge concern, with improper inventory and storage management, poor demand forecasting, and large portion sizes all contributing to the issue. With IoT devices, restaurants can predict future demand more accurately and monitor storage conditions in real-time, therefore reducing large quantities of waste.
- Hospitality sector: Food waste in the hospitality industry continues to escalate, with the global hotel industry producing 79,000 tons of food waste annually. IoT devices help businesses in the hospitality sector reduce large-scale waste by automating various tasks, improving demand forecasting, and ensuring the efficient use of resources.
- Food manufacturers: Production inefficiencies, packaging issues, overproduction, improper storage, and supply chain disruptions all contribute to food waste in manufacturing. By adopting IoT technologies, manufacturers can monitor production in real-time and use predictive analytics to improve demand forecasting.
Benefits of IoT Food Waste Management
The benefits of IoT-based food waste management include:
- Cost Reduction: Businesses can enjoy significant cost savings by using IoT’s real-time monitoring and predictive analytics to reduce overproduction, spoilage, and waste disposal costs.
- Enhanced sustainability: IoT helps businesses minimize waste, conserve resources, and contribute to broader environmental initiatives, therefore helping the U.S. reach its goal of cutting food loss and waste in half by the year 2030.
- Regulatory compliance: IoT helps businesses comply with the increasing number of food waste laws, providing accurate, real-time data that can be used to demonstrate compliance with regulations, such as tracking food temperatures, monitoring waste disposal practices, and ensuring proper handling of perishable goods.
- Operational efficiency: A huge benefit of IoT is its ability to streamline operations, from procurement to disposal, leading to more efficient use of resources and labor, optimized workflows, and reduced manual interventions. IoT also allows businesses to monitor and control multiple processes remotely, improving overall operational efficiency.
- Improved decision-making: Having access to real-time data helps businesses significantly improve inventory management, identify inefficiencies, and enhance demand forecasting, all of which are critical in the fight against food waste.
Challenges of Integrating IoT in Business Food Waste Management
There are various obstacles that companies may face when adopting IoT systems, including:
- Initial costs and ROI: High initial costs are a huge concern for many businesses, especially small companies with limited resources. That said, IoT helps businesses reduce spoilage, minimize financial losses, automate tasks, and ensure compliance, meaning it has a large ROI that can result in long-term savings. For the best return on investment, businesses should implement scalable solutions that grow alongside their business.
- Data security and privacy concerns: Protecting sensitive data should be a top priority for businesses, especially data concerning inventory levels, production schedules, and sales data. To mitigate the risk of unauthorized access and data breaches, your business can implement various strategies, including encryption, secure data transmission, and regular security audits.
- Scalability and integration: Scalability is a crucial aspect of long-term success. To avoid potential issues in the future, businesses can plan for scalability from the outset, choosing systems that can handle increased data loads and complexity as their business grows. Your system should also be able to integrate seamlessly with other enterprise systems like ERP and supply chain management platforms, ensuring cohesive operations and enabling data-driven decision-making as the business expands.
The Bottom Line
IoT-based food waste management offers businesses a new opportunity to reduce waste, optimize operations, and make data-driven decisions. As businesses increasingly prioritize sustainability, they must consider which waste management approach best fits their unique goals.
At Shapiro, we provide comprehensive food waste management solutions that help businesses of all sizes divert food from landfills, stay compliant, and become leaders in sustainability.
Contact us today to learn more about our services.
Baily Ramsey, an accomplished marketing specialist, brings a unique blend of anthropological insight and marketing finesse to the digital landscape. Specializing in educational content creation, she creates content for various industries, with a particular interest in environmental initiatives.
