Coming soon: A ‘smart sticker’ to track food freshness
September 8, 2010
Lesley Ciarula Taylor
STAFF REPORTER
A bottle of spoiled milk at a university lunch inspired scientists to develop a tech solution to the millions of dollars worth of wasted or spoiled food.
“The milk was spoiled but the ‘best before’ said it had three more days,” Christian Aasland, chief executive officer of TimeTemp, told the Star on Wednesday.
“The quality of a product isn’t dependent on how old it is. It’s how much time has passed since production.”
In Norway, 30 per cent of all purchased food ends up as waste and 20 per cent of that is still good to eat, he said.
The waste works out, in Norway and the U.K., to about 70 kilograms per person a year.
“Best before” stickers err on the side of caution — despite that university lunch milk bottle, said Aasland.
The technology of TimeTemp puts a temperature sensitive sticker on food that tracks how long it spends at the optimum temperature for preservation, from the first moment of production. As the temperatures rises — in the warehouse, in the grocery store, on the shelf — the freshness indicator moves.
“We’ve tested three or four or five thousand prototypes,” said Aasland. Each new type of product needs its own TimeTemp.
First developed at Norway’s University of Life Sciences in 2002, TimeTemp became a “green packaging start-up company” in 2007 and hopes to have its first commercial launch this fall, said Aasland.
“There’s got to be a better way to determine the quality of the food we eat. Mountains of perfectly eatable food are wasted every year.”
The technology will also automatically adjust for the seasons, he said.
“In countries like Canada and Norway, the differences between summer and winter are great. This will be an easy way for consumers to allow for that.”
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