20.500.12556/DiRROS-27746 Smart scale toolset for household food waste estimation Accurate measurement of household food waste is essential for informed policymaking and effective reduction strategies. Traditional methods – such as questionnaires, food diaries and waste composition analysis – face trade-offs between accuracy, participant burden, scalability and cost. This article presents a novel digital methodology designed to support structured, harmonized and scalable measurement of household food waste in real-life settings. The approach integrates a custom-built smart kitchen scale with a mobile application and a cloud-based portal. The system guides participants through daily waste recording by automatically capturing weight data and allowing users to categorize discarded food by type, avoidability and disposal method. All data is transmitted in real time to a centralized platform, ensuring consistent, high-quality data with minimal user effort. The toolset supports field campaigns involving hundreds of households over a defined period (e.g., one week), improving standardization and reducing reporting errors. The method can be seen as an enhanced form of direct measurement, combining the accuracy of weighing-based approaches with the efficiency of digital tools. A pilot study confirms the system’s feasibility, participant acceptance and ability to generate detailed, comparable datasets suitable for food waste reporting at different levels. This work contributes a practical, open-source solution for household food waste monitoring, addressing key limitations of existing methods. It offers a valuable tool for researchers, municipalities and NGOs to conduct reliable, large-scale food waste assessments. waste quantification methods digital data collection smart scale technology household food waste food waste monitoring metode kvantifikacije odpadkov digitalno zbiranje podatkov tehnologija pametnih tehtnic gospodinjski odpadki hrane spremljanje odpadne hrane true false true Elsevier Nizozemska Angleški jezik Slovenski jezik © 2026 The Authors Neznano 2026-02-24 10:52:53 2026-02-24 10:52:53 2026-02-25 03:50:44 0000-00-00 00:00:00 2026 0 0 Nasl. z nasl. zaslona; Opis vira z dne 10. 2. 2026; str. 1-10 [ǂarticle no.] ǂ200317 Vol. 29 Mar. 2026 0000-00-00 Zaloznikova Objavljeno apc 2025-08-28 2026-01-29 2026-01-30 681 2667-3789 10.1016/j.rcradv.2026.200317 267919363 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2667378926000064 1 9847961c-1166-11f1-9cb0-001a4af901a5 https://dirros.openscience.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=40769 RAZ_Gradisar_Dejan_2026.pdf RAZ_Gradisar_Dejan_2026.pdf 1 42D8829067955745E54D5C431CE24793 74c1e22998c8f0b031c9a34dab9a494dac1e728003262f3021afe394fffcb761 e21ac504-1166-11f1-9cb0-001a4af901a5 https://dirros.openscience.si/Dokument.php?lang=slv&id=40770 Institut Jožef Stefan 0 0 0