MealMend: A Web-Based Platform for Surplus Food Redistribution and Sustainable Food Waste Management

Abstract

Food waste and food insecurity coexist as significant environmental, social, and resource-management challenges. Edible surplus food generated by households, restaurants, food courts, institutions, markets, and social events may be discarded when timely coordination between donors and receiving organizations is unavailable. This paper presents MealMend, a web-based prototype designed to support structured surplus-food donation and sustainable food-waste management through a common digital interface. The system incorporates user registration and role selection, location entry, food categorization, structured donation details, pickup scheduling, donation-history tracking, and information related to sustainable recovery pathways. The proposed workflow prioritizes redistribution of suitable surplus food for human consumption while distinguishing organic material that may require alternative recovery through processes such as composting or anaerobic digestion. The prototype demonstrates the functional feasibility of organizing major donation and recovery activities through an integrated web-based workflow. The present study reports system design and prototype implementation rather than a field-deployment impact assessment; therefore, no quantitative claims regarding food-waste reduction, redistribution efficiency, or food-security improvement are made. Future work will focus on geolocation-based matching, verified receiver integration, automated notifications, food-safety controls, real-time status tracking, analytics, and pilot deployment.

Introduction

The text presents MealMend, a proposed web-based platform for coordinating surplus-food redistribution and promoting sustainable food-waste management. It begins by identifying food waste as a major environmental, economic, and food-security problem, noting that discarded food also wastes the land, water, energy, labour, and other resources used throughout the food supply chain.

The paper emphasizes food recovery and redistribution as preferable pathways for surplus food that remains safe and suitable for human consumption, while distinguishing this from other treatments such as composting or energy recovery for food that cannot be redistributed.

A major challenge identified is the lack of efficient coordination between food donors and recipients. Restaurants, households, retailers, institutions, and event organizers may struggle to communicate surplus-food quantity, location, availability, and pickup requirements, while receiving organizations may lack visibility into available donations. Digital platforms can address these problems by centralizing information and enabling structured communication.

The related-work section reviews existing digital food-donation and redistribution systems, including web-based platforms and computational approaches. These studies demonstrate the usefulness of structured donation listings, participant roles, location information, communication, status tracking, and donation records. However, the text argues that there is room for a unified system combining these functions with awareness of appropriate food-waste recovery pathways.

Proposed MealMend system

MealMend is designed around five main stages:

1. Participant onboarding – Users register and select their role within the donation ecosystem.
2. Donation creation – Donors provide structured information about available surplus food.
3. Collection planning – Pickup requirements and location information are recorded to facilitate coordination.
4. Suitability assessment – Food is conceptually distinguished according to whether it is appropriate for redistribution.
5. Redistribution or recovery – Suitable food is directed toward donation, while unsuitable organic material can be considered for alternative recovery pathways.

The prototype includes user registration, role selection, location entry, surplus-food details, pickup scheduling, and donation-history tracking. Location information is intended to provide a foundation for future GPS-based matching and routing.

Research contribution and limitations

The paper's contribution is primarily system design and functional implementation, rather than empirical proof of reduced food waste or food insecurity. It does not claim that web-based food donation itself is novel. Instead, its proposed contribution is the integration of donation management, collection planning, traceability, and sustainability-oriented recovery awareness into one workflow.

The current prototype does not implement or experimentally validate real-time donor-recipient matching, automated food-safety verification, GPS routing, production-grade authentication, or measurable real-world reductions in food waste. These are identified as potential areas for future development and evaluation.

In short: MealMend aims to provide a structured digital bridge between surplus-food donors and potential recipients, while ensuring that food suitable for human consumption is distinguished from organic waste requiring other recovery methods.

Conclusion

This paper presented MealMend, a web-based prototype designed to support structured surplus-food redistribution and sustainable food-waste management. The system integrates participant registration, role selection, location information, structured donation entry, pickup scheduling, donation-history tracking, and sustainability-oriented recovery awareness within a common digital interface. The proposed workflow distinguishes surplus food intended for redistribution from organic material requiring alternative recovery, thereby connecting donation management with a broader food-waste-management perspective. The present implementation demonstrates the functional feasibility of representing the proposed coordination workflow through a web-based platform. However, it does not establish measurable reductions in food waste or improvements in food-distribution outcomes. Real-world effectiveness will require deployment involving verified donors and receiving organizations together with appropriate food-safety controls, geolocation, notifications, secure authentication, privacy mechanisms, and operational monitoring. Future pilot studies can provide quantitative evidence regarding successful redistribution, coordination efficiency, response time, waste diversion, usability, and participant acceptance. With these extensions and appropriate real-world evaluation, MealMend can evolve from a functional prototype into a more comprehensive digital platform for community-level surplus-food recovery and sustainable food-waste management.

References

[1] United Nations Environment Programme, Food Waste Index Report 2024. Nairobi, Kenya: UNEP, 2024. [2] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “Food Loss and Food Waste,” Policy Support and Governance Gateway. Accessed: Aug. 10, 2026. [3] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “Recovery and redistribution of food,” Technical Platform on the Measurement and Reduction of Food Loss and Waste. Accessed: Aug. 10, 2026. [4] A. Karanth, A. K. Hemareddy, C. G. T., G. N., and H. V. Magadum, “A Web-Based Food Donation And Redistribution Platform For Efficient Surplus Food Management,” International Journal of Computer Sciences and Engineering, vol. 13, no. 12, pp. 27–32, 2025, doi: 10.26438/ijcse/v13i12.2732. [5] S. S. Shivani and M. Usha, “A Web-Based Food Donation and Redistribution System to Minimize Food Waste and Support NGOs,” International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer and Communication Engineering, vol. 15, no. 1, 2026, doi: 10.17148/IJARCCE.2026.151148. [6] S. Sanyal, V. K. Singh, F. Xhafa, B. Sanyal, and S. Mukhopadhyay, “A Game Theoretic Framework for Surplus Food Distribution in Smart Cities and Beyond,” arXiv:2102.04929, 2021, doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2102.04929.

Copyright

Copyright © 2026 Priyanshu Raj, Sonu Kumar, Ashutosh Kumar Jha, Mantosh Kumar Gupta, Sweta . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.