Elaine (Yi-Hsun) Hsieh¹, Hailey (Yung-Chen) Hsieh¹ and Jenny Wong², ¹USA, ²California State Polytechnic University, USA

In this research project, we aim to solve the issue of food waste particularly in school campuses after seeing the large amount of waste thrown away each day at the school lunch. Oftentimes, students dislike the food choices they are given, and some other times, food gets thrown away when they order more than needed. To combat food waste, we created FoodShare Connect which includes three different roles, school manager, family, and students. The school manager can add the food items for students to vote, as well as the food available for giveaways. This will effectively decrease food waste as the students get to vote for the food that they like, and the unused food products can be distributed to families who want it. Throughout the process, we resolved the issue of preventing users from signing up with the wrong role, dealt with data storage, and prevented students from voting more than once a day. This is done mostly with the use of Google Firebase, where we store the data, and Flutter language. We made sure to save all the necessary information on Firebase, check whether the user is using the same role to log in as their role saved in Firebase, and override all the voting information as the new day begins. Overall, we believe this APP can tremendously decrease food waste in school campuses, save a lot more for others in need, and most importantly, save our environment.

Flutter, Food Waste, Environment Protection, Mobile Application