Smart Food Bin Market Trends

Growth Drivers

• Necessity to Comply with the UN Sustainable Development Goals on Food Waste
  Food waste has become a global problem and many nations have been urged to take serious steps and action to reduce the problem of food waste that has been existing for a considerable period in several parts of the world. According to the Executive Director of United Nations Environment Programme, it was reported that food waste constituted an approximate cost of USD 990 billion annually. The United Nations had fixed a target for the countries that is laid out under Sustainable Development Goal 12 that states that there must be responsible consumption and production by nations and the goal is to lower the per capita food waste by half globally at both retail and consumer levels by 2030. All these factors are anticipated to drive the demand for smart food bins and are also estimated to drive the growth of the smart food bin market over the forecast period. 
• Rising Awareness among individuals across the Globe on the significance of food waste and its effects on the global population 
  Many nations from various parts of the world have started raising awareness among their local population about the necessity to stop food from being wasted. The importance of protecting food from being wasted has been seen from not only an economic point of view, but also as a worrying trend that it could lead to depletion of natural resources causing scarcity of such resources in the environment. According to STREFOWA, a project initiated in the European Union to reduce and manage food waste in the European Union (EU), it was reported that at least 88 million tons of food are being wasted across the supply chain annually. Food loss and waste can occur at various stages of a food value chain such as agriculture, post-harvest, processing and other stages. Several efforts have been taken by governments from all over the world for preventing food waste. The government of United Kingdom had pledged a funding package of 15 million pounds to reduce food waste. The UK government has joined hands with businesses and other charity organizations by which it has aimed to bring down the quantity of edible surplus food that goes wasted every year. These factors are estimated to boost the demand for smart food bins from various regions across the globe and is estimated to drive the growth of the smart food bin market over the forecast period.
• Capacity to Identify and Segregate various forms of Food Waste Individually
  The smart food bin market has the capacity to identify and segregate various forms of food waste individually, which would enable restaurants and food outlets optimize their food production accordingly. The various forms of food that are being disposed off will be identified by taking a picture of the food waste in the smart bin and subsequently the data related to the same will be fed into a computer for understanding what foods are being wasted and the percentage of food that is being wasted. This can help the restaurants and food outlets to optimize their food production in such a way that the food that is being prepared would be just sufficient to meet the needs of the consumers, thereby reducing the quantity of food that would be reaching the landfills ultimately. According to World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the amount of food wasted and ultimately reaching landfills can produce methane, which is a greenhouse gas that can cause greater harm than carbon-dioxide. As per a Report released by Restaurant Food Waste Action Guide (ReFed), it had estimated that about 52.4 million tons of food is being sent to the landfill. All these factors are anticipated to raise the demand for smart food bins among the global population and is also anticipated to drive the growth of the smart food bin market over the forecast period. 

Challenges

The smart food bin market that is faced with tremendous potential for rapid growth may be subject to a few barriers such as low levels of awareness across several regions of the world, predominantly the smart food bin markets in underdeveloped and developing nations who are still lagging behind in terms of technology. Additionally, with many nations across the globe still to initiate drastic steps to combat the fight against food waste is seen as a major challenge faced globally in mitigating food waste. According to Champions 12.3, only about 15 percent of the global population have acted fast to reduce food loss and waste.  Moreover, not a single nation has yet announced that it has managed to halve food loss and waste, that includes the absence of quantification nationally and is also restricting the tracking necessary to achieve the milestone. These factors are anticipated to operate as major restraints to the growth of the smart food bin market over the forecast period.