Data in food waste: sorting and recycling - HK Daily food waste is about 3600 tonnes, and 93% of it goes to the landfill. It makes up a third of our trash – the largest category – taking up Hong Kong’s limited landfill space.  Alternatively, recycled food waste goes to: animal feeds, flower soils, or waste-to-energy plant. To make the above recycling process more effective, the food waste must be sorted appropriately: e.g., food versus packaging, non-recyclable versus recyclable, cooked versus raw, meat-in-rich versus vegetable-in-rich, etc. Therefore, the emerging smart garbage bin with portable and affordable sensors in sorting the food waste is demanded. In this presentation, the modern sensing technologies for food waste sorting will be discussed. And, for the sake of environmental conservation, the data relevant to food, packaging, and waste management will also be covered.

Dr. Chun Zhang obtained PhD in physics at HKUST in 1999. He then worked at UC Berkeley for four years, at NAMI for eight years, and at ASTRI for twelve years, continuing his pursuit of optical sensing. He is now the Director of Sensing Devices and Integration of ASTRI, supervising the developments of leading technologies in digital jewellery inspection, portable environmental sensor, and smartphone spectrometer. 

Please contact phweb@ust.hk should you have questions about the talk.