ScrapSavor is one of my proudest accomplishments to date. Working in a group I barely knew, on a project we had collectively ranked fifth out of ten possible ideas, my group and I managed to build something I think has real potential.
Research and Interviews
We were given one goal at the start: address food waste using artificial intelligence. From there, we had to figure out what that actually meant. We threw around a lot of ideas early on, from AI-powered recipe generation to sensor-equipped fridges that could detect expiration dates in real time. Eventually we landed on our final concept: a mobile app that logs all the food in a household, tracks expiration dates, and monitors the user's waste output over time.
That idea did not come out of thin air. We started with databases like Statista to get a clearer picture of the problem. What we found was striking: the world wastes over one billion tons of food every year, costing the global economy over $1 trillion, while more than 783 million people worldwide still suffer from hunger. On top of that, food waste is responsible for more than five times the greenhouse gas emissions of the entire aviation sector.
To figure out where we could have the most impact, we looked closer. Sixty-one percent of all food waste comes from households, and young adults between 20 and 29 care over 15% less about the issue than any other age group. That gave us our target demographic.
From there, my teammates and I put together a list of ten potential interviewees across fields related to our project and carried them out one by one. We spoke with culinary professionals, sustainability experts, an AI professional, storefront workers and managers, and even our own families. Each conversation helped sharpen our thinking in a different way.
From our parents, we learned how stressful routine meal planning can be, and that a lot of that stress comes from not knowing what ingredients you actually have on hand. That insight led directly to the digital food inventory, the core feature of our app. From a professor we had worked with earlier in the year, we learned about similar apps already on the market — seeing the competition pushed us to make ScrapSavor a one-stop shop. From a chef who had taught a workshop we attended, we learned that a large portion of home food waste comes from buying ingredients for one specific dish without thinking about how to use them across multiple meals. The most consistent piece of feedback across almost every interview, though, was that practicality had to come first.
Design and Production
The final version of ScrapSavor has four main features.
The first is the digital inventory system. This catalogs all food in a given household, storing information on when each item was purchased, what it cost, where it is being stored, and how much time it has before it goes bad.
The second is the AI-powered receipt scanner, which is honestly the coolest part of the app. To log food into your inventory, all you have to do is take a photo of your grocery receipt. An AI model then reads each item and its associated cost, generates a conservative expiration estimate, and adds it all to your inventory in three taps.
The third is the home page and notification system. The home page surfaces whatever foods are closest to expiring so you always know what to prioritize. ScrapSavor also sends email notifications if any item is going bad within the next two days.
The fourth is the waste tracking system, which is the heart of the app. When you finish something, you tap "Mark Used" and it leaves your inventory cleanly. If you end up throwing something away instead, you tap "Dispose" and it gets logged in your waste history. Because the inventory tracks what you paid for every item, the app tallies the total cost of everything you have thrown away and displays it prominently. That number is the hook for users who would not otherwise care about food waste.
Conclusion
In a little over a month, my team built something that I genuinely believe has meaningful real-world potential, a sentiment echoed by nearly everyone who has seen it. ScrapSavor pushed me to work at a high level across research, communication, design, and collaboration all at once, and I came away from it more confident in my ability to contribute to a team in a lot of different ways. And as far as I am concerned, the app is still far from finished.