Food waste is becoming an increasing threat to the environment and the economy. Estimates indicate that annually, a third of the food produced around the world ends up being wasted. Only one-fourth of that food is enough to take nearly a billion people out of starvation. Food waste is especially higher in more developed countries, including most of the states in the European Union and the USA. Sector-wise, food is being lost from field to fork, with households topping the charts. Overbuying, not knowing what already is in the fridge, unaware of the food until it eventually expires, are among the most common reasons that contribute to the food waste. The potential prevention of such massive waste could significantly reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions around the world and help the economy of the households including all the parties involved in food production, distributing and retailing. On the other hand, technology has progressed in very rapid steps. The advancement of AI, ML, IoT, and voice-enabled devices has revolutionized many industries and has made us more efficient as human beings. Unfortunately, these advancements haven't yet had any significant impact in assisting families with their food choices and in preventing them from overbuying and throwing food away. Most of the proposed solutions addressing this issue, do not get integrated into everyday life. That is because they require a lot of manual input, rely entirely on mobile phones, do not show immediate results to keep users motivated, and on top of all, for the sole fact that modern lives are quite complex, and although an important issue, food waste is not an everyday cause of concern of an average person. This thesis takes into account all of the shortcomings of the previous works and aims to create a more sustainable solution by exploring new ways of food inventory management in the households by automating the process so that users don't have to manually enter the data themselves. The proposed solution consists of a device that should be easily mounted into any fridge and acts as an interface between users and their food inventory. The device contains a bar-code scanner for the item input and a back-end that is capable of recognizing the item and can in return show user-friendly and valuable information such as the approximate price of the item, the approximate due date etc. and notifies users when an item is about to expire so that they can take appropriate actions. 7 out of 9 participants in the final conceptual design study said they would use this solution in their homes. The rest of the results from the designed test cases indicate a clear excitement and interest in participants and a willingness to see the prototype in the finished state, all the comments and insights together with the future work and how the feedback will be used into the next iteration are part of the final discussion of this thesis.

Klimatet har på senare tid blivit en av de mest omdiskuterade och viktigaste frågorna i samhället. Om Parisavtalets mål om att hålla den globala temperaturökningen under 2 grader skall lyckas, måste utsläppen av växthusgaser att minska. Det finns ett flertal sätt till att minska växthusgasutsläppen, och ett av sättet är med hjälp av ett minskat matsvinn från hushåll, vilket bland annat är något FN uppmärksammat bland sina 17 hållbarhetsmålet satta till år 2030. I dagsläget slängs en ohållbar mängd mat, och en av anledningarna är av bortglömde matlådor vars innehåll har behövt slängas på grund av att bäst före-datumet passerats. Den här studien kommer att undersöka om det går, med en framtagen intervention designad med utgångspunk i beteendeförädringsramverket The Behaviour Change Wheel, att uppmuntra till ett beteende för ett minskat matsvinn. Interventionen kommer att innefatta ett inläsningssystem för matlådor, vars syfte är att hjälpa dess användare att hålla koll på sina matlådor. Sex deltagare blev rekryterade till studien utifrån en enkät, och fick under en tvåveckorsperiod testa på att använda inläsningssystemet. Resultatet skulle indikera på att inläsningssystemet fungerade som tänkt för vissa av deltagarna, men att den för andra deltagare inte gjorde det. Detta berodde emellertid inte på systemet i sig, utan istället till vilken grad deltagaren hade använt matlådor. / The climate debate has recently become one of the most discussed and important topics. If the Paris Agreement's goal of keeping the increase in global temperature below 2 degrees, the reduction of greenhouse gas emission is vital. There are several ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and one of the ways is throughout a reduced food waste. This is also a topic that the UN has taken notice of among its 17 sustainable development goals set by 2030. At present, an unsustainable amount of food is thrown away, and one of the reasons is because of forgotten food boxes whose content has had to be thrown away because the expiration date has passed. This study will investigate if it is possible, with an intervention designed based on The Behavior Change Wheel framework, to encourages a behavior for a reduced food waste. The intervention will consist of a scanning system for food boxes, whose purpose is to help its user to keep track of their food boxes. Six participants were recruited to the study based on a questionnaire and got to test the scanning system for a two-week period. The result would indicate that the system worked as intended for some of the participants, but not for some others. This was not due to the system itself, but instead to what extent the participant had used food boxes.

Šiame darbe,nagrinėjamos "gudrių namų" technologijos tendencijos bei informacinių technologijų integravimo į buitinį šaldytuvą galimybės. Remiantis atliktos produktų aprašomosios informacijos bei galimų produktų atpažinimo ir identifikavimo metodų analizes duomenimis sudarytas produktų atpažinimo ir identifikavimo sistemos modelis. Sistemos modelio racionalumas išbandytas eksperimentiškai. / In this work, there are analyzed tendencies of the "Smart house" technology and possibilities to integrate new technologies into a kichen's appliences. Acording to results of the analizes of product information and possible methods of the product recognition and identification there was compossed product recognition and identification system model.