Designing cooling stations for food sharing in public spaces

Approximately one third of the world food production is wasted, although the food would still be appropriate for consumption. The project described in this paper is targeting this problem by developing cooling stations containing an information system to access their contents. These cooling stations are supposed to be deployed in public places in a European city. The important advantage of such an approach is that it conforms to legal regulations concerning food distribution and consumption, in contrast to simple public refrigerators. Two studies were conducted to assess whether such cooling stations can be used for food sharing purposes — a field test and focus groups. These investigations indicate that relevant stakeholders find such cooling stations helpful. Nevertheless, there are still problems concerning trust, especially in the quality of the food offered through food sharing when there is a large anonymous community. The paper outlines possible solutions for this problem.