Food Waste Sensors

Snoot is the two-part prototype detector that was designed to cleverly repurpose food before it goes to waste. The system includes a handheld sensor with a snout-like piece for sniffing out the gases released by decaying food, and then a mouth-shaped printer spits out a recipe suggestion.

This system helps to playfully provide reassurance that the scanned item is still perfectly good to eat, and it has the potential to change perceptions of food waste. The current prototype is only capable of detecting ethylene but future versions could integrate other modes of detection.

Northumbria University graduate Harriet Almond created Snoot as a fun and approachable way to tackle the issue of food waste. In the UK alone, it's estimated that 4.5 million tons of edible food is thrown away every year.