A whopping 63% of all food produced in Canada — 35.5 million tonnes — is lost or wasted, according to a new report, and about a third of that wasted food could be "rescued" and sent to communities in need across the country and some 4.82 million tonnes of food, or nearly $21 billion worth, is lost or wasted during the processing and manufacturing process. Some 2.38 million tonnes of food, or more than $10 billion worth, is lost at the consumer level.

In total, the value of all food that is lost or wasted in Canada is a staggering $49 billion, the report says. The amount of food is enough to feed every Canadian for five months.

Education and awareness about the environmental and social consequences of food waste is already understood by the public and social media marketing to spread awareness

Raising awareness at a national level through federal PSA’s can boost the public’s interest in reducing food waste

Onboarding stakeholders may be a barrier and Tax credit can be an incentive, and educating retailers about Canada’s commitment with United Nation’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

After gathering and understanding the problem space we set out to few interviews, We interviewed ten families and below are the most important takeaways

Food waste most commonly occurs in Canadian households as a result of poor inventory awareness

Miscommunication and repeat purchases result in surplus food and excess spending

Meal planning occurs based on cravings rather than shelf life

Canadian families are eco-conscious

We started off by collecting data from interviews then we defined our personas and their goals and the stages of your customer journey. following we were able to map out John and Melissa’s journey, this helped in what we wanted to do and gave clarity of where we should focus our efforts first and how to really move the needle.

Our next step was to sketch out the initial ideas and have it speed critiqued, and straw polled, we then decided on the direction we wanted to take the solution:

As we began prototyping we set out accomplish and have impact on four areas

• Help users align their grocery shopping App

• Help users to be aligned on their grocery list shopping list

• Help users know what is available in the inventory

• Instant notifications on soon to be expire product, recipe suggestions to help reduce waste

After ideating we got into Wireframes and sketched a complete user journey out. We did two rounds of Usability testing with 20 testers to ensure our message was coming across. The major feedback we received concerned four areas

• Collaborating with other household users within the app will align grocery needs, and monthly feedback will help track habits.

• The smart recipe guide was a useful feature to help users make smarter meal plans by using food items that are going to expire first.

• Misunderstanding of buttons and icons, such as adding and deleting feature (swipe left and swipe right) was found confusing by our testers which is under inventory tab

• It takes a bit longer for the user to figure out what is the use of light bulb icon and how the smart recipe feature works.

  We took the feedback and made changes to our final prototype

Coordinated Shopping

Aligned grocery list verification

Inventory Awareness

Smart inventory guide and smart recipes

Tracking habits

Tips and household feedback for weekly, monthly or daily consumption habits.

We would have loved to user test more in the initial stages and incorporate feedback from testing, We gained important key insights as we did choose a few visual elements to push the envelope and would have loved a bit more feedback. But as they say design is a never ending process.

• We would like to clarify our buttons and incorporate In-app tutorials.

• Sharing food statistics with. family and friends would be great new addition to promote Waste management.

• Tips to inform the users of best practices which we feel would help in turn motivate the user to. be more conscious