Since the lack of innovation around food waste reduction in the home has long been a personal pet peeve of mine, I couldn’t help but get a little excited when I caught word of the Shelfy.
According to the gadget’s Kickstarter page, it is a “smart device that will make your food last longer” by purifying the fridge’s air. The Shelfy does this by sucking the fridge’s air into a ceramic filter and capturing bacteria. From there, “the pollutants are destroyed and not mechanically retained” using a process called photocatalysis.
Vitesy, the company behind the Shelfy, retained the services of a testing lab by the name of CSI SpA – FPM (Food Packaging Materials Laboratory) to test the product and write a report attesting to its capabilities. The report concluded by saying, “the evidence from the present study returns encouraging results” and that the “organoleptic evaluations show that the module is effective in slowing the aging of the tested products, postponing the appearance of wilting, softening, staining and rotting.”
All this sounds encouraging, and the report and the testing agency look legit, but I’d caution anyone who thinks dropping the Shelfy into their fridge will make them a food waste warrior. The Shelfy won’t help you extend the life of any food in an air-tight food storage container, or things like meat, cheese, or other food products sitting inside its packaging. It also requires you to store things like greens openly in the fridge, which is different from how many bring these food home from the store.
In other words, to take advantage of the Shelfy’s benefits, the product’s owners must orient their food storage behavior around the product itself. They also need to recognize that the Shelfy will not help them save everything. On the other hand, the product could make sense for those who are willing to create a system of different approaches and technologies to reduce food waste. And the gadget could be the perfect fit for those who struggle specifically with fruits and veggies going bad in the produce drawer.
Finally, it looks like the Shelfy already seems to have some competition in the form of other stand-alone fridge air purifiers available online and integrated air purifiers in high-end fridges such as Sub-Zero. While none of these (that I know of) use a similar ceramic filter system, these competing solutions reduce bacteria and gases like ethylene from the air that accelerates aging in food.
If you’re interested in the Shelfy, the product’s Kickstarter campaign runs for another couple weeks. Early bird pricing is about €94/$93 (there are only a couple left as of this morning), and the regular campaign price is €119/$117.
It’s always worth expressing a note of caution for any hardware crowdfunding campaign. However, prospective backers can take comfort in the fact that the company behind the product has previously shipped three different hardware products through Kickstarter.
