Meet the finalists and watch them pitch their innovative solutions to tackling food waste in the hospitality, food markets and airline sectors!

This year City of Melbourne, Rocket Seeder and City of Bandung (Indonesia) joined forces to create the Melbourne-Bandung Food Waste Challenge. We invited startups, entrepreneurs, businesses and researchers to develop innovative solutions to the pressing economic and environmental issue of food waste experienced by industry partners in both Melbourne and Bandung.

Over the 10-week challenge, participating teams have worked directly with industry partners in both cities to understand and respond to their 'real-world' food waste challenges. They have undertaken 'back of house' tours of their business operations, interrogated industry data and market insights, participated in workshops and met with expert mentors and industry representatives to get feedback, test and validate their solutions.

The participating industry partners are: Showtime Events Group, Destiny Catering, Queen Victoria Market, Kosambi Market, Melbourne Airport, Garuda Indonesia

The six finalists are now ready to pitch their best solutions:

BIKI: an Agrifood startup that has a post-harvest edible coating technology which extends the shelf life of fruit and vegetables, plus an app to enhance digital traceability.
Circular Vision: AI-powered Waste Sorting solution with MediaScreen for bins to create a new platform of digital ads
Envmission: an inventory management & waste analytics platform to help F&B industry customers to track, manage, and optimize their inventory to reduce inventory loss and waste.
Wasteplant: Gardenship is a modular, circular, highly efficient composting solution that helps urban development precincts to turn what used to be costly, smelly waste management practices into regenerative, relaxing public space.
Ngadaur: a social enterprise focused on organic waste management initiatives including integrated behaviour change education, biogas technology and composting in a box (koboks).
ZeroLoop: an on-demand food waste recovery platform that connects businesses with surplus food to local composters, farmers, and processors. It monitors levels of waste in real time to optimise collections, reduce landfill, and keep food waste circulating in a sustainable loop.

Join us to watch their pitches and live Q&A with the judging panel as they compete for the opportunity to pilot their solution with one of the industry partners. Winners will be announced on the night and you will also have the opportunity to vote for your favourite to win the People's Choice Award.

Note: A livestream link will be available for our friends in Bandung to join us virtually!