NEWS COPY – With pics and video
An 11-year-old schoolgirl has created a food waste-fighting fruit bowl in a bid to help Britain cut down the country’s £13 billion-worth of binned goods annually.
The fruit bowl, named the ‘Alarm Cup’ which notifies its owner when its contents have two days left until they expire, was crowned the winner of the Ocado Food Waste Challenge with Little Inventors.
Rumaan’s “Alarm Cup” features a mini touchscreen display with icons for different produce.
Currently in development phase, it can also pair with Ocado’s shopping app to prompt users to use up fruit with food waste-fighting recipes such as apple crumble and banana bread.
Rumaan Malik, from Lincolnshire, invented the innovative device and scooped the award in Ocado’s Food Waste Challenge.
It was praised for its ability to prevent the nation from throwing away fruit by disrupting habits and routine thought processes.
Helen White, Special Advisor on Household Food Waste at WRAP, said: "We were particularly impressed by Rumaan’s invention as it addresses one of the key reasons food ends up in the bin: not using it in time.
"Even if we understand the difference between date labels, we can still struggle to use what we’ve bought.
"The Alarm Cup challenges this by reminding us when our food needs using up, and nudges us towards adopting positive behaviours that can help to reduce the 5 million tonnes of good food wasted from our homes every year.”
Rumaan’s invention will be showcased as part of the Little Inventors stand at the Great Exhibition of the North this summer from now until Sunday 9th September.
Her invention triumphed over 500 entries from primary school Little Inventor workshops for one key reason: it challenges the thought processes and habits that lead to food waste.
Talking about her inspiration behind her idea, Rumaan said: “Apples are my favourite, but they were always going all soft when my mum left them out in the fruit bowl and forgot about them”.
Ocado’s collaboration with Little Inventors comes after the retailer released its near-zero food waste figures last month at 0.02% - just 1 in 6,000 items - alongside its new Fight Food Waste platform.
Suzanne Westlake, Head of Corporate Responsibility at Ocado, added: “Food belongs in bellies not bins. We were captivated by the children’s drawings and it was great to see so many imaginative ideas.
"The Alarm Cup has the potential to truly make a difference when it comes to saving food from the bin – I think we’ve uncovered something very special. We’re testing the prototype at the moment, but we’re certainly keen to explore opportunities to roll this out and make it available on ocado.com for our customers.
"Watch this space.”
ENDS
