Amazing Apps: EatBy

The “Smart Kitchen” EatBy App reduces food waste, saving households $1,000 per year and helps the environment.

The staggering amount of wasted food has been widely covered in the press lately. Meanwhile the husband and wife developers of the EatBy App, Steffan and Barbara Lewis, have been working on the EatBy project from their home in Scotland for over a year and a half. Their passion for finding a solution to the environmental issues surrounding food waste has grown since the project began.

“We had the idea one lunchtime after we had to throw out the food we'd hoped to eat because it had passed it's use by date. That led to a purge of all the out of date food in our kitchen. And quite frankly, we were shocked and disgusted with ourselves when we realised how much we waste.” said Barbara Lewis.

Over one year later and the app is ready for launch. It will be free to download and use with an optional shopping list that can be activated with an in app purchase. 

Recent reports state that the average household wastes $80 every month on uneaten food. With over 123 million U.S. households that's $9,840,000,000. With an equivalent amount in Europe, that's a staggering $236 Billion each year. It's known that about one third of all food produced is discarded.

But the real cost is to the environment. This amounts to 1.3 billion tonnes of wasted food contributing 10% of greenhouse gasses.

Many strategies for reducing food waste have been proposed by environmentalists, government agencies and industry specialists. But the husband and wife creators of the EatBy App claim their app will be the first practical personal tech solution to the problem of food waste. It is a simple to use Smart Kitchen App that effectively helps manage the food in your kitchen and lets you know when food items expire. The optional integrated shopping list will also help reduce buying too much food in the first place.

“We are under no illusion that our app will immediately solve this global problem,” Said Steffan Lewis, “But if only a few million people download and use it, then it'll already make an impact and that'd be a great start. Obviously, we'd like everyone to use our app and benefit from it!”