Discover how a groundbreaking microchip technology could prevent millions of liters of milk from going to waste, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and revolutionizing the dairy industry.
Tackling Food Waste
We face an overwhelming food waste issue in our world, 1. That is roughly 132 kg per person of food waste worldwide.
Notably, milk is one of the products with the highest wastage rates; a staggering one in six liters of milk produced globally is thrown away. This waste is generated at the beginning of the production process when dairies push the milk through their pipes so that all of cleaning fluid would be cleaned out before starting to produce a new round. Every single day across the globe tens of thousands of liters of milk are tipped down the drain from every dairy in the world as a preventative measure.
A Microchip Solution
Tags: Tech Companies Source DTU × Share On The Nexus researchers work to…Researchers from the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) has gathered three tech companies for atollaborate in the Nexus consortium, which aims to fix this problem. Inventors have come up with a microchip optical spectrometer so tiny that it is smaller than child’s pinkie fingernail, and which can measure the concentrations of liquid, fat, and protein in the pipes to let dairies know whether milk residues from earlier production runs or cleaning agents are present.
Today, dairies have to clean and flush the pipes with significant amounts of milk to avoid contamination — a labor-intensive, pricey process that’s also harmful for the environment. This new microchip technology is hoped to give a faster and more economical solution, enabling dairies to monitor the contents of their pipes more accurately and prevent unnecessarily discarding milk.
The researchers involved in the initiative think that this tech could go a long way, not just in dairy, but nearly any food production where industrial waste or contaminants are an issue. The microchip could help reduce food waste and improve food safety in developing countries which have a lower level of importance placed on these important issues, by offering a smarter, less costly way to monitor production processes.
Conclusion
This cutting-edge microchip technology could revolutionize the dairy industry even more. This could prevent millions of liters of milk from being wasted, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving the sustainability of dairy production. The team plans to continue developing and bringing the technology to market, with the vision of it becoming an established method for monitoring food production, in a way that will prevent spoilage — all favoring a more sustainable interior environment and communities worldwide.
