A PROTOTYPE that builds upon the current GoodHood platform – which matches food requests from local communities to establishments with surplus food to offer – was unveiled on Friday (April 8).

The team behind the technology, Divert for 2nd Life (D2L.sg), comprises students from the four local universities.

D2L.sg is a homegrown initiative which aims to achieve zero food waste in Singapore through collecting various forms of unwanted, unsellable and surplus food items.

The group was among the five winners in a competition that was organised by DBS and the National Environment Agency (NEA) late last year.

According to NEA, in 2020, Singapore generated around 665,000 tonnes of food waste, which is equivalent to each individual discarding about 1.5 bowls of food per day. This figure increased to 817,000 tonnes in 2021.

Hence, The DBS Foundation X NEA Hungry for Change Challenge is part of broader efforts to drive food security and resilience. Opened to students from tertiary institutions and its alumni, the competition attracted more than 60 teams.

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The five winning teams – selected for their innovativeness and the potential impact of their solutions – walked away with S$25,000 each, awarded by DBS Foundation.

The amount will go towards running a six-month pilot programme, and helping the teams to implement and scale up their innovations – by improving operational efficiencies and deepening research and development efforts, among others.

Project consultations with NEA will also be available to the teams, to help their progress.

Karen Ngui, group head, DBS Strategic Marketing and Communications and Board Member of DBS Foundation, said: “Singapore is home to many young, bright minds who care deeply about the deteriorating state of the world we’re living in and are developing meaningful solutions that can make an impact and drive change.”

Lim Yuin Chien, group director, Public Engagement Group, NEA, said: “Through this collaboration, we want to empower youths in Singapore to continue advancing national sustainability efforts, under NEA’s Youth for Environmental Sustainability (YES) movement.”

Therefore, Lin QingHui, founder of D2L.sg, who studied in the US and UK, said: “Joining the competition was a natural thing for us to do as zero food waste is essentially what we are trying to achieve. Our distribution method allows the end consumer to receive the food very quickly as the distribution can be done as soon as the food is collected.”

One of the initial challenges the team faced was “finding ways to pivot as we grew so that we can scale more effectively to achieve greater impact”. Hence, having the support of DBS and NEA will help, she added. “The support will help us to develop tech modules that allow us to offer value added services to businesses and automate our processes so that we can scale more effectively.”

Another winning team, Change X from Nanyang Technological University (NTU), proposed using artificial intelligence to track the kinds of foods F&B outlets had left over at the end of the week, then to repackage these into “mystery boxes” to be sold at nice prices. 

Mitra Sachi, who took on the role of Change X team’s chief executive officer, said the issue of food waste touches several spheres of life – from schools and other institutional settings to catered buffets at big events, and also National Service.  

The groups said the competition pushed them to think more deeply about food waste, and inspired them to tie all their ideas together, and to contribute to the national effort to lessen food waste.  - With additional reporting by Ashley Koh