The WASTELESS project, in which the researchers of our University's Food Engineering Department are involved, has been accepted by the European Commission. This success was achieved in the 2022 calls for Cluster 6: Food, Bioeconomy, Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment, where intense competition is experienced, within the scope of Horizon Europe, the world's largest civil R&D and innovation program.

The presence of many data gaps in waste statistics for different food products is considered as an important shortcoming in the fight to reduce food waste. In this context, the WASTELESS project titled Waste Quantification to Limit Environmental Stress focuses on the development of comprehensive and reliable data collection tools/technologies throughout the supply chain to understand and map food loss and waste, thereby developing models for reducing food loss and waste based on different countries and foods. Hacettepe University researchers (Dr. Burçe Ataç Mogol and Dr. Ezgi Doğan Cömert), under the leadership of Dr. Vural Gökmen, will take an important role in the WASTELESS project with their experience and competence in the development of a smart refrigerator prototype. This protoype will be developed based on machine learning and image processing tools to reduce food losses and waste at household level.