Shocked by the tonnage of food that Andover wastes per year, members of Team 007 decided to combat food waste on campus. Their app, “Sous,” for iOS, works to repurpose leftover food from Paresky Commons for various charities and after-school activities.
The members of Team 007 are Alisa Bhakta ’16, Ally Klionsky ’17, Di Ouyang ’15 and Carra Wu ’17.
Wu said in an interview with The Phillipian, “You’ll go on your phone, open the app and see that [Paresky] has posted that they have 30 roast beef sandwiches left over from [that day’s] lunch. You would come to the catering office at the back of [Paresky,] and you could just take however many sandwiches you would like. Then, you would put in [the app] how many you took, and the app would update with how many are left.”
“Our assignment was to create an app that somehow benefits the community and so what we decided to do was a combination of food waste reducer and trying to help people get food when they need it,” said Wu.
Ouyang said, “We are starting small. We have spoken to the Commons staff such as [Michael] Giampa, and he is thinking about incorporating this into next year’s work duty. Commons could set up a food station after 7 p.m. when dinner ends, and have a pickup at 8 p.m. with students on work duty preparing these meals.”
The team did research to find their target audience through various surveys posted on PAnet. A requirement for the competition was also to find if they had any competitors in the app store that offered the same service, of which there are only two others.
