Less Is More: Preventing Household Food Waste through an Integrated Mobile Application

This paper proposes an intervention using personal Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to help consumers reduce household food waste. Across the global food-supply chain, about one-third of all edible food is lost or wasted each year, and this issue is particularly pressing in in the Global North. We present a detailed overview of consumer activity in relation to household food waste using the Multilayered Installation Design Approach (MID). We trace consumer activity along the acquisition, storage, consumption, and disposal stages and provide a comprehensive set of recommendations on how to use personal ICTs to reduce household food waste rooted in the extant empirical literature. We then develop a concept for an application that integrates the full suite of potential avenues for intervention in one place.