INTERCHANGE 2022
I had the wonderful opportunity to represent UNSW in an innovation and entrepreneurship competition led by Franked.io. Over the course of 5 weeks, I networked and met with different students from universities across Australia along with industry mentors who shared their inspiring stories and advice for creating a start-up, building resilience, and navigating employees' current interest in remote working. Throughout the competition, I had access to online courses to develop the latest start-up and innovation thinking, which helped me create a compelling pitch.
Our challenge was to create a simulated start-up and identify and address real-life problems facing humanity. Our team worked to combat the problem of food waste in Australia.
OUR SOLUTION
Through researching the existing solutions we gained more knowledge about the food waste industry and identified the main causes of food waste in Australia:
1. Australians discard up to 20% of the food they purchase.
2. 20% to 40% of fruit and vegetables are rejected before they reach supermarket shelves. This is due to the stringent regulations on how food looks - a consequence of our unrealistic aesthetic expectations as consumers.
3. Food items are incorrectly labelled in supermarkets, causing confusion regarding their sell-by dates which means perfectly edible food is discarded long before it is actually out of date.
* These facts are of the current situation in 2022.
Given this information, our team decided to combat a solution that addresses the second point.
Our idea:
Waste Matters is a social enterprise that brings you fresh fruit juice curated from unwanted or unaesthetic fruit. To prevent major food waste, we implement a pasteurization process that prolongs the product life cycle whilst still maintaining its freshness. Delivered right to your door for your pleasure! Moreover, our business aims to promote sustainable practices in all aspects of our business starting with green packaging.
Reflection:
Given our short time frame to work on this project, our ideas couldn’t be as refined as possible. However, it was a very fulfilling experience to get to network and meet so many inspiring people from all backgrounds to learn about our shared interest in entrepreneurship and innovation.