Researchers from Oregon State University-Cascades have received $640,000 (£513,000) in funding to develop the bin as part of efforts to cut the estimated one-third of food in the US that goes to waste.
“At every other step of the agricultural supply chain, food waste is tracked, measured and quantified,” said project leader Patrick Donnelly. “However, approaches to measuring post-consumer food waste are costly, time-intensive, prone to human error and infeasible at a large scale.
“We’re adapting our design to accommodate consumers’ current behaviour, using compost bins commonly distributed by waste utilities as a template.
“When a user disposes of edible and non-edible food waste in the bin, our device prompts the user to describe the deposited items. The user’s note is then transcribed with automatic speech recognition and associated with a weight measurement of the items.”
The device will collect 3D images and sensor measurements of the food waste,...