Sharebite: Smart Food Donation and Waste Management System

Abstract

Two of the biggest issues faced by the world today, in terms of scale, are hunger and food wastage, particularly in developing nations such as India. Every day, millions of pounds of edible food go to waste from people’s homes, restaurants, hotels, and social gatherings, while at the same time, people struggle to get a decent amount of food for themselves and their families. This is due to a lack of coordination between food donors, volunteers, and NGOs who know where to find hungry people, a lack of awareness among people on how to donate food, and a lack of a formal structure for distributing excess food from one person/place to another. This project aims to create ShareBite, a smart food donation and wastage management system.It connects individuals who want to donate food with those who are willing to accept food donations; provides information to facilitate donation processes (including how and when to donate); and integrates modern web technology into the donation system to improve transparency, accountability, and efficiency in redistributing surplus food. Additionally, it provides a way for donors and recipients of food donations to communicate through an SMS-based system without requiring a smartphone. The system promotes environmental sustainability in the disposal of expired food through composting. The proposed system makes an impact on social welfare, sustainability, and the effective utilization of surplus food, with future scope for intelligent prediction models and large-scale deployment.