Case study:
Positive Carbon
Aisling Kirwan and Mark Kirwan

Providing fully automated food waste monitoring to commercial kitchens across Ireland.

Problem

Food waste is one of the largest contributors to climate change – accounting for 10% of all global greenhouse gas emissions. In Ireland, we waste 1 million tonnes of food every year at a great economic and environmental cost. The food service sector is responsible for 250,000 tonnes of food waste, costing €300 million to the industry per annum and resulting in 875,000 tonnes of CO2. Aisling and Mark (co-founders) met while both working at FoodCloud and have worked with food retailers across Ireland, the UK, Australia and Chile. They founded Positive Carbon in 2020.

Solution

Positive Carbon provides fully automated food waste monitoring to commercial kitchens across Ireland. The goal is to prevent as much climate change contributing carbon as possible by providing tools to commercial kitchens to allow them to reduce their food waste with the use of their patented food waste monitoring technology. As food is thrown in the bin, their technology can calculate the weight of the food while a camera takes an image of the food and AI labels the food type. With this information, and along with the support provided by Positive Carbon, food businesses will be able to change their purchasing, production and preparation habits to reduce their food waste.

SEI Journey 

Impact Programme 2021-2022

Impact

Positive Carbon are working with some of the largest foodservice providers in Ireland including Gather & Gather and KSG, as well as sustainable hotels such as The Grand Hotel and Sandymount Hotel, Universities like DCU and TCD, and large multinationals. They have made food waste monitoring easy for the 20 sites they are working with, with one customer saying “it’s great to have access to all this data now and it’s all really user-friendly. They provide an incredibly useful tool when it comes to monitoring and reducing food waste!”

Posted 20.07/22

Aisling Kirwan and Mark Kirwan are the co founders of Positive Carbon