In September 2024, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change reported that food waste was responsible for 8 to 10% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions; the cost of this wasted food was USD 1 trillion per year.

In the UK, consumers throw away masses of perfectly good perishable food because its expiry date has passed. But these dates are inconsistently applied and based on worst-case scenarios. The Bump system works alongside the printed date, reacting to actual storage conditions and providing consumer confidence that food remains good beyond its expiry date.

Industrial designer Solveiga Pakštaitė, co-founder and Chief Design Officer at Mimica, invented the original Bump concept. Working with the Guide Dogs charity during the industry year of her degree course, she began thinking about accessibility for the visually impaired.

“Speaking with lots of people with various degrees of visual impairment, I realised food management was a key challenge. I decided to tackle the problem of making the food information system more inclusive and quickly realised that in general we don’t really know when our food spoils, which is why we are wasting so much,” she says.

Expiry dates

For safety reasons, expiry dates assume a poor storage environment after food is purchased, commonly based on a temperature of 8°C. Stored at a cooler temperature, food remains fresh beyond its expiry date and Solveiga addressed the challenge of communicating to consumers how much longer.

Data from the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP) suggests that as much as 70% of food thrown away in the UK is safe to eat. Food waste is also a pain point for retailers, who often sell food cheaply when it reaches its expiry date and throw it away when they do not need to. When food is discarded, the emissions associated with producing, processing, packing, transporting and disposing of it are in vain; plus, food rotting in landfill releases methane, which is a far more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Solveiga’s food labelling solution for the visually impaired works equally well for everyone: the Bump Tag for packaged perishable food, including fish and meat, and Bump Cap for milk, bottled juices and other perishable liquids. The system uses a temperature sensitive gel that is activated at the time the food is packed. The gel, and a set of ‘pointy bumps’, are sealed in the Bump product. After activation, the gel collapses at a time corresponding with the food spoiling, at which point the previously smooth Bump product feels bumpy when a finger is passed over it.

Mimica uses food producers’ storage and shelf life data to calibrate the gel for specific packaged products. In this way, the Bump system accurately indicates extended freshness and reduced time should the product be left unrefrigerated.

Alongside the £68,000 grant funding, as a winner in the Net Zero Living Programme’s user-focused design competition, Mimica gained access to invaluable Design Council and other expertise. The funding allowed Mimica to place packs equipped with the Bump system in front of consumers to assess how they interpreted and used it. The exercise revealed some confusion over its presentation and Mimica worked with researchers in user-centred design at Sheffield Hallam University and with the Design Council to solve the problem through redesigned graphics and the addition of simple instructions.

Retail trial

Mimica has designed Bump for easy integration into existing food packaging, with which it can be recycled. As part of its Net Zero Living Programme project, the company also calculated what Solveiga terms the Bump system’s ‘net environmental impact’. Taking steak as a test case, a life-cycle assessment for Bump Tag production was performed and the data combined with calculations on the baseline wastage of beef in the UK, the carbon footprint of that waste and how much waste could be reduced compared to the WRAP data.

Mimica’s work revealed that saving just 0.03% of beef waste will offset Bump Tag manufacturing emissions – the likely saving on waste using the Bump system is 29%.

Reducing food waste is among the most important things people can do at home to reduce their carbon footprint. The Bump system can help them do that and the Innovate UK Net Zero Living Programme, which led to amazing collaboration with the Design Council and our design mentor Darren Evans, helped us present it in a way that will filter into changing habits and everyday life.

– Solveiga Pakštaitė, Cco-founder and Chief Design Officer at Mimica

The project concluded with a live trial across 100 households. Run in partnership with the ABP Food Group, it demonstrated overwhelming consumer acceptance for the Bump Tag and Mimica is now retail testing with the company.