In this case I have tried to apply for key questions of what is, what if, what wows and  what works on the food waste problem.

In what if stage I explore the current reality, with what if I start to generate ideas and  create solutions and possibilities, on what wows I start to test the ideas and narrows  down the solution options to a few candidates and finally with what works rolls out  prototypes for testing and refining via experimentation.

What is?

Global food waste is a huge problem with tremendous financial, ethical and  environmental costs.

An estimated 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted globally each year, one third of all food  produced for human consumption, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization  (FAO) of the United Nations.

The amount of food lost or wasted costs 2.6 trillion USD annually and is more than  enough to feed all the 815 million hungry people in the world four times over.

What if?

The idea of this step is to generate different ideas to reduce the food loss, here I have  tried to gather information about 3 different initiatives on food waste:

Channing consumer behavior by educating them to buy exactly what they need & be  realistic about what they need, example if someone live alone doesn’t need same  amount of apple than a family need, etc.

Donations & significant discounts on unsold food, Supermarkets in industrialized  nations can, and often do, donate unsold goods, also they can sell the unsold product  which are about to expire with a significant discount.

Turning leftovers to other products, almost 90 percent of garbage thrown away by  households, cafeterias, and supermarkets is composed of recyclable food. This food  can transform to new products or event energy.

What wows?

Regarding changing consumer behaviors there are several ongoing initiatives, like  apps for doing shopping list or monitor what you throw away: Taking an inventory of the  food in the house and making a grocery list before going to the store help avoid  purchasing unnecessary foods and cut back on potential waste. Other inactive is using  practice like “FIFO” stands for “first in, first out” and is a useful way to organize food at  home. Many restaurants and grocery stores use this system to reduce waste, too.

About food donations and providing unsold food with significant discount, although  many apps in different countries have been released, there is still some issue regarding  trust: Many grocery stores and restaurants don't give away their unused food because  they are afraid of being liable if someone gets sick from their donated food. On the  other side not many people is eager to buy food that is about to expire or don’t trust  buying food with a low price.

About transforming, there are already quite a few initiatives transforming leftovers into  new products: turning coffee cherries into flour, producing ale from leftover bread,  turning restaurant scraps into bioplastics and home food waste into biogas - essentially  using food scraps to produce household energy.

What work?

From my point of view all the initiatives could work but from all of them changing  consumer behavior is cheapest and easiest way to reduce food waste now.

Regarding food selling & donations still we need more awareness and acceptation on  the society and creating new products from the waste food need big amount of  inversions.

