The issue of food waste is something that not everyone is aware of and is ultimately worsening as time progresses. The purpose of LifeLight is to create awareness around the proper storage of all types of foods in the fridge whilst also allowing consumers to know the correct places to store foods in their fridges for them to last the longest shelf life possible. The use of LEDs helps attract attention and can aid in colour coding our fridges to change storage behaviour. There are many different stages of food waste ranging from the farm to household consumption, and it is the latter stages of storage and consumption that this project aims to address and rectify.

In my research, it was identified that food waste in the household is created for a variety of reasons, particularly that of the ways in which we store our foods in the refrigerator. However, it was also found to be something caused by psychological reasons, such as the ways we think about our foods and whether we perceive them to be of value or not.

The LifeLight project explores the ways in which people can be taught a bit more about the foods surrounding them, either with the use of physical tools, or digital and mental educational cues.

Methods used for finding this information involved participant research paired with small sets of questions to gather valuable feedback to attempt to answer the question: What methods can be used to benefit a person’s knowledge of food waste and the detrimental effects it will cause on society in the long run?