Food waste detection method and system

A system for detecting food related products before being thrown away, the system comprising:

• one or more cameras;
• a display unit;
• a computing device that is communicatively connected to the one or more cameras and the display unit;
• a scale that is communicatively connected to the computing device, wherein the scale is configured to hold a trash bin,
• wherein the one or more cameras are configured to obtain an image or a video of the food related products when the food related products are within a field of view of the one or more cameras and before the food related products are in the trash bin,
• wherein the scale is configured to obtain weight information of the food related products when the food related products are in the trash bin, and
• wherein the computing device is configured to:
• receive the weight information from the scale and to obtain therefrom a weight of the food related products;
• obtain information about the food related products from the obtained image or video by applying an image recognition algorithm configured to detect multiple ingredients in the image or the video and configured to assign to individual pixels of the image or video a respective ingredient label corresponding to one of the ingredients detected in the image or video, and by computing a ratio between the multiple ingredients detected in the image or video based on the ingredient labels assigned to the individual pixels;
• assign weight estimates to the respective ingredients detected in the image or video by registering the weight across the multiple ingredients detected in the image or video pursuant to said ratio;
• and
• generate and output data on the display unit, wherein the data is based on the information about the food related products, on the weight estimates, and on the weight information.