Chair: Wired reviewer Joe Ray, Panelists: Stop Wasting Food Movement Founder Selina Juul, Karma CEO and Co-Founder Hjalmar Nordegren, Electrolux Group Design, Trends Researcher Sofia Andreasson
We’re running a series of stories all week to highlight what we learnt from our recent ‘Future Kitchen’ event. We invited food, kitchen and tech industry leaders to our headquarters to look deeper into the digital technologies, business models and societal shifts changing how the consumer eats, buys, stores and prepares food.
Highlight three
Tackling food waste in the home is a priority, and consumers are becoming open to changing their food habits, agreed panelists discussing sustainability and food waste.
The issue of food waste is a global issue – with food wasted being enough to feed three billion people whilst almost one billion people are starving – and it was agreed not one player can solve the problem in isolation but organizations at different parts of the taste journey needed to work together.
“It’s about education. We need to re-programme ourselves. It’s about repeating to consumers how to stop wasting food and doing it in a positive way”, expressed Stop Wasting Food Movement Founder Selina Juul.
Hjalmar Nordegren, who heads up the Sweden-born app Karma which allows consumers to buy unsold food from restaurants, cafes and grocers via a Karma fridge for half the regular price, noted an ‘attitudinal shift’, explaining that using food waste is now becoming more accepted.
Agreeing with Nordegren, Electrolux Group Design, Trends Researcher Sofia Andreasson added: “We see eco credentials as something that you can show off today. If people have now got the attitude shift, the next step is the behavioral shift. We need to bring solutions to the people who are now ready to make the shift.”
