1.1 Definition and presentation

Anti-waste applications are defined as those applications that having sustainability at heart aim to find innovative and effective solutions to avoid waste of anything such as food or clothes. One can find applications that sell you unsold food at discounted prices or that give you the opportunity to sell clothes you no longer use. In this study, apps that aim to waste less food are considered.

Globally, as analyzed by the FAO, food waste is estimated to be 1.3 billion tons per year or about one-third of the world's population. In addition, the food waste management market is estimated to reach a value of $54.29 billion by 2028 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.6 percent. The determining factor in this growth is the increased awareness of citizens regarding sustainability and circular economy issues, which leads them to pay more attention to them in their daily lives.

As for Italy, the country in the year 2020 recorded a 25% decrease from the previous year on food waste. In addition, 36 percent of Italians say they pay attention to the environmental impact that food waste causes, and the country ranks 13th in Europe in the amount of food wasted. An example of Italian success in the world of anti-waste applications is Myfoody. This app was born in 2016 and allows you to shop for products that are expiring or have packaging defects while managing to save up to 50 percent. Another example of an application is "Empty the fridge," which aims to suggest recipes based on the products one has in the fridge. In this way, users are enticed to use all leftover products without having to throw them away.

1.2 The Global Market

Every year about */* of all food produced globally is thrown away totaling about *.* billion tons annually with a value of about US$* trillion, a value that could feed *** million who go hungry every day. Food waste per person by consumers is between ** and *** kilograms per year in Europe, North America, and ...

1.3 The Italian market

According to the Food Sustainability Index ****, each household threw **kg of food into the trash, food services another **kg and retail sales *kg. This means that each Italian citizen, directly or indirectly, was responsible for wasting **kg of food. This implies a waste of about * million tons with a waste value ...

2.1 Food waste in Italy

When discussing food waste, it is appropriate to distinguish between two categories of waste:

Food loss (***) : such waste occurs upstream in the agrifood chain, due to climatic factors, technical means used, perishability, poor harvest storage and unsuitable management of the product by the farmer-producer Food waste in thenarrow sense (***) : such waste ...

2.2 The new consumption habits of Italians

Italians are becoming more aware of how necessary and essential it is to adopt more sustainable consumption patterns. **% of Italians lead a more sustainable lifestyle since the beginning of the pandemic and **% would be willing to spend more on green products[***].

Italians are aware of the negative effects of waste such ...

2.3 Waste in catering and large-scale retail trade

**% of food waste occurs at the food service and consumption stage. Most food waste in the restaurant industry occurs during the food preparation stage (***) . Consequently, the responsibility for so much waste lies with chefs, those who work in kitchens, and end customers, but also with restaurant managers who often plan wrong ...

3.1 Most popular anti-waste apps

Several apps are involved in food waste management. Given the fact that the market is relatively new, it is not possible to distinguish different market shares. However, there are players that are more established than others in the Italian market due to the fact that they were born earlier or due ...

3.2 The most popular anti-waste apps in Italy

Most of the active applications in the market, however, are of Italian origin. In fact, there are many projects and applications born in recent years to counter the phenomenon of food waste. This is an indication of how this type of market is clearly expanding and how Italian consumers like to ...

4.1 The products

We have seen how anti-waste appliactions are continuously increasing. We can distinguish between two different types of mobile apps :

A progressive web application (***) is like a mobile version of an existing website. It opens on a web browser for smartphones, tablets, or computers. A native application is an application that users ...

4.2 The different business models

We can distinguish four different business models in the mobile application market

The Freemium model consists of offering the application for free and pushing customers to purchase additional features. This model maximizes the value of a customer over time, and then deploys a free customer base that will convert new customers. ...

5.1 Regulation

Several regulations have been enacted at both the community and national levels to reduce food waste. As early as ****, the U.N. General Assembly set a goal of halving per capita food waste at the retail and consumer level and reducing food losses along supply and production chains by ****.

The European ...

6.1 Segmentation

*Since most of the applications in the market are newly born or otherwise start-ups, most are not yet profitable and manage to operate through fundraising from private and/or institutional investors.