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IoT for Reducing Food Wastage in Australia

Home Articles IoT for Reducing Food Wastage in Australia

What is IOT?

IoT is an abbreviated form of Internet of things which is an ever-growing network of objects. These networked objects can be accessed through internet. The things that are connected to the internet can be accessed and controlled with the help of internet is called IoT. It consists of three components namely sensors, connectivity, people with the help of IoT users which can be controlled devices from anywhere.

Working mechanism of IoT

Nowadays, IoT is evolved to IOE i.e. internet of everything. It consists of all devices that can collect, sense data from their surrounding environment using sensors and communication hardware. The devices that are connected to internet are known as “smart devices”.  IoT enabled devices can communicate with other devices and that communication is known as machine to machine communication.  Humans can interact with IoT enabled smart devices in order to gather data. IoT enabled devices can work their own with human intervention, this is the reason why these devices are known as smart devices. The sensors embedded in smart devices can collect information and data from surroundings. The collected data is transmitted for computational purpose. After data computation, smart device analyzes the information and act upon it accordingly.

Use of IOT to reduce food waste-

IoT proves as a milestone in the effort to reduce food wastage. Wastage of food is a serious issue that needs to be addressed and overcome by using optimal solutions. IoT technology provides best solution to tackle food wastage related issues. IoT enabled devices such as smart refrigerators, smart fridge cameras, food container with smart tags, smart trash cans are used to monitor status of food.

  1. Smart refrigerator- it is a smart household appliance and it is the necessity of each house. As name suggested smart refrigerator take actions without intervention of humans. Smart refrigerator plays an important role in reducing food wastage. As smart refrigerator is equipped with food freshness sensors such as amine sensor, CO2 sensor, dust sensor, ethylene sensor, H2S sensor. With the use of smart refrigerator, freshness of food remains consistent up to 5 days due to which food will not get wasted. As depicted in the figure given below smart refrigerator trigger information about the freshness level of food.
  1. Nowadays, food-based industries focused on IoT technology that can reduce food wastage to a large extent. IoT sensors are placed in agriculture field during harvesting time period, smart sensors collect data about temperature which is considered as a critical factor that affects the freshness of food grains. These sensors not only provide information about quality of food gain, freshness factor of food grains. Additionally, these smart sensors also provide information about expiry date of the product. With his information that product initially sells that possess short life span. Thus, with the uses of IoT enabled smart sensor food wastage issue can be mitigated.
  2. Smart fridge cameras- this camera is equipped in refrigerator that facilitates users to see foodstuff available in the fridge via app. The smart fridge triggers a reminder on smart app that carries information about food items. Alter notification has been displayed on smart app to ensure that “item will get expired if it is not used yet”.
  3. IoT in pest and hygiene management- electronic engineers of Australia created a small autonomous IoT device. These small IoT enables devices can be mixed with gains to monitor various environment conditions for the crops. These devices provide useful information to farmers so that crops can be protected from the pest. The GRDC (Grain Research and Development Corporation) of Australia issued a guideline to how gains can be monitored using IoT
  4. IOT in food production management- with the use of IoT enabled devices producer can monitor their crops. The smart sensors collect real-time information about the crops

Some of the challenges associated with IoT technology are-

  1. Scalability- IoT enabled devices are not able to adapt changes in the environment thus they fail to efficiently work over wider range of environmental conditions.
  2. Interoperability- Due to independent platform, hardware cannot communicate with each other thus IoT enabled device lacks in standardization due to which they fail to establish communication channel with another device.
  3. Data volumes and interpretation- As IoT enabled devices are resource constrained device due to which they possess less storage capacity and unable to store large volume of data.
  4. Power supply- The battery of sensor can be drained out as they are battery operated devices due to which smart device fails to work.
  5. Wireless communication- Sensor can communicate with each other through wire network (ad-hoc network) due to which intruder can hack and control sensor for monetary purpose.

Applications of IoT are-

  1. Building and home automation
  2. Medical and health care systems
  3. Infrastructure management
  4. Transportation
  5. Better quality of life or elder people
  6. Manufacturing
  7. Media
  8. Energy management


  • Dou, Z., Ferguson, J., Galligan, D., Kelly, A., Finn, S., & Giegengack, R. (2016). Assessing U.S. food wastage and opportunities for reduction. Global Food Security8, 19-26. doi: 10.1016/j.gfs.2016.02.001
  • Okunishi, T. (2017). IoT (IoT Supporting our Life and Industryï¼‰. Nippon Shokuhin Kagaku Kogaku Kaishi64(5), 283-283. doi: 10.3136/nskkk.64.283

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