Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PREFE (This proposal is about PREFEapp, an innovative mobile app that aims at cutting food waste at its roots thanks to the cooperation of final consumers, municipal undertakings and LSRT players.)
Reporting period: 2018-09-01 to 2019-02-28
"If food waste were a nation, it would be the third country in the world in terms of CO2 emissions". Every year, more than one third of the food produced for human consumption is lost or let expire, accounting for 1.6 billion tons of food and for about $ 2.6 trillion in total costs - meaning economic, environmental and social. For this reason, the EU, followed by the US and many other countries, made a first step towards fighting food waste by signing the 12.3 Sustainable Development Goal aiming at halving domestic food waste per capita within 2030. During these years, a plethora of solutions have been designed to address this problem, but none of them was able to prevent food waste from increasing in size and future forecasts predict an even worse situation, with food waste reaching 2.1 billion tons per year, meaning $3.4 trillion as global cost, by 2030.
As perfectly summarized by the words of Jordon Lazell, a researcher of The International Food Loss and Food Waste Studies Group, the world needs to "ensure that there is not any surplus food produced" if we want to preserve our planet and to ensure the sustainable development of our society; an evidence that was already noticed by Softline in 2017, when PREFE project emerged as an answer to this increasingly urgent issue.
The goal of the project is to create a new consumption paradigm by giving every single person the tools to fight such plague, which can be done by creating a virtuous ecosystem in which final consumers, retailers and waste management companies benefit from co-operating one with the other and thanks to exploiting the possibilities offered by technology.
As perfectly summarized by the words of Jordon Lazell, a researcher of The International Food Loss and Food Waste Studies Group, the world needs to "ensure that there is not any surplus food produced" if we want to preserve our planet and to ensure the sustainable development of our society; an evidence that was already noticed by Softline in 2017, when PREFE project emerged as an answer to this increasingly urgent issue.
The goal of the project is to create a new consumption paradigm by giving every single person the tools to fight such plague, which can be done by creating a virtuous ecosystem in which final consumers, retailers and waste management companies benefit from co-operating one with the other and thanks to exploiting the possibilities offered by technology.
During the past months, Softline tested its mobile application prototype for final consumers, with the goal of validating all the functionalities designed, and ran several interviews with European waste management companies and an Italian retailer that allowed it to approve the main functionalities of the web platforms that will be dedicated to these actors. Together with such aspects, the company deeply analyzed the global food waste market by building the big picture of the competitive scenario, gathering insights and monitoring new and existing trends and solutions.
All this represented the basis for the development of a complete business plan highlighting the innovative potential of the product, the unique competitive advantage coming from the cooperation of the three actors previously mentioned, the go-to-market strategy for the mobile application and the web interfaces, the operative plan for the development of the industrialized versions of the products and the financial forecasts for the first five years after the launch on the market.
At the end of the project, Softline reached a complete understanding of the needs of all the actors targeted by the project and was able to precisely assess project's feasibility and future profitability.
All this represented the basis for the development of a complete business plan highlighting the innovative potential of the product, the unique competitive advantage coming from the cooperation of the three actors previously mentioned, the go-to-market strategy for the mobile application and the web interfaces, the operative plan for the development of the industrialized versions of the products and the financial forecasts for the first five years after the launch on the market.
At the end of the project, Softline reached a complete understanding of the needs of all the actors targeted by the project and was able to precisely assess project's feasibility and future profitability.
Compared to the state of the art, PREFE project is the first solution in the world allowing to really change people's consumption paradigm and its extremely scalable business model puts the basis for fast growth and potential worldwide adoption.
Being a Phase 1 project, the scope was to assess its economic feasibility, validate the market and the business model and put the basis for the future industrialization of the available prototype. Since all these objectives have been met, the next step will be to participate in the Horizon 2020 Phase 2 call of the SME Instrument. In case also such goal is met, the impact of the project after the launch on the market will be significant all over the EU, where the first target markets are located, providing relevant contribution to reaching the SDG 12.3 goal and abating CO2 emissions.
Being a Phase 1 project, the scope was to assess its economic feasibility, validate the market and the business model and put the basis for the future industrialization of the available prototype. Since all these objectives have been met, the next step will be to participate in the Horizon 2020 Phase 2 call of the SME Instrument. In case also such goal is met, the impact of the project after the launch on the market will be significant all over the EU, where the first target markets are located, providing relevant contribution to reaching the SDG 12.3 goal and abating CO2 emissions.