Newcastle University
“Waste-Not!”: Networked Sensor Innovation Driving Sustainable Food Practices, Community Sharing, and Waste Prevention
Finalist, Research with Impact - Institution
Finalist, Research with Impact
About
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Food waste generates 8 to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and around 73% of UK food waste comes from households. The root cause is uncertainty: expiry dates are conservative and human judgement is subjective, so edible food is binned prematurely and surplus sharing stalls because safety cannot be evidenced. Waste-Not! answers this with a £30 multi-sensor unit, an “artificial nose”, placed inside fridges. It fuses gas, |
Top three learnings
1. Deploy small and early: real fridges taught us more than any laboratory benchmark.
2. Battery life and user burden, not sensing accuracy, decide whether households keep participating.
3. Quantified freshness creates the trust that makes surplus food sharing genuinely possible.
SDGs
12 - Responsible consumption and production
What it means to win
A Green Gown Award would affirm something Newcastle University values: that civic commitment and research strength reinforce each other. Waste-Not! was built inside the homes and community kitchens of the North East, with residents helping shape the technology rather than just hosting it. Recognition on a national stage would validate that way of working and carry weight with the local authorities, third sector and industry partners we are now relying on to scale. It would land at a useful moment, too. The project is led by an early career researcher and grew from a small charitable grant into a deployed system. An award would show others starting out here that this kind of work is backed, and help us secure the follow-on funding to move from a controlled pilot toward measured reductions in food waste, and on to the related problem of household mould.
| 2026 | |
| Research with Impact - Institution | |
| Finalist, UK and Ireland |
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Green Gown Award Regions
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