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Hi, I'm Sri · I'm 11 · Grapevine, TX

Why are we throwing away so much good food?
Let's actually figure it out.

Hi! I'm Sri. I'm eleven. I built a little sensor that can tell when food has actually gone bad, about 8 hours before your nose figures it out. I'm using it to help families and food pantries waste less, so more good food can feed people who are hungry.

See my experiments Grab the free toolkit
  • 24 Experiments (so far)
  • 5 Versions of the gadget
  • 8 hrs Faster than your nose
  • 1.3M Hungry neighbors in DFW
V5 wiring · drawn by Sri ESP32-S
Sri's hand-drawn wiring diagram showing the ESP32-S AI-Thinker module connected to a power supply (5V), DHT11 temp/humidity (pin 15), MQ4 methane gas (pin 32), moisture sensor (pin 35), alarm (pin 4), 16x2 LED display, red LED (pin 12), and green LED (pin 13)
Wi-Fi hotspot required 8 components

My V5 wiring diagram. The real photos live on the lab notebook.

Some numbers

These are the ones that won't leave me alone.

5.7M Tons of food Texas tosses every year. Yes, really.
1.3M People in DFW who don't have enough to eat
6,000 Donuts one local shop throws out every single day
30–50% How much waste families can cut once they know the trick
Sri at the Krispy Kreme counter talking to a worker, with empty donut racks visible behind
The conversation that started everything. Krispy Kreme, Grapevine, TX.
The story that started everything

The 6,000 Donut Mystery.

One day at my favorite donut shop, I asked how many donuts they throw away each day. The answer? About six thousand. Every. Day. Not because the donuts are bad, but because they're scared the donuts might be.

"Wait. So many people are hungry, and all this perfectly good food is just being tossed? There has to be a way to actually know if food is bad. Not guess."

- me, walking out of the donut shop

So that became my whole project. Seven months of late-night reading, a giant box of parts, five versions of the gadget, and 24 experiments (lots of them failed, which is normal!). The point: a little sensor that can tell when food has actually gone bad, instead of trusting a printed date that doesn't really mean what people think it means.

Read the full story
What I'm actually doing about it

One little gadget. Three big plans.

01 · THE GADGET

I built a little sensor.

It sniffs the gases food gives off when it's spoiling. It knows about 8 hours before my nose does. I've made 5 versions and run 24 experiments. (Most of them broke. That's how you learn.)

See the Lab Notebook 02 · THE KITCHEN HELP

I'm sharing what I figured out.

Free printables and "is this still good?" tricks for families and kids. Bust some food myths. Save your strawberries. Stop throwing perfectly fine food in the trash.

Bust some myths 03 · THE BIG FIX

I'm writing letters too.

The dates on food labels are confusing on purpose (well, kind of). I'm writing to my congresswoman and the Texas Department of Agriculture to ask them to fix that, with real numbers from my sensor.

See the advocacy work
Watch the gadget work

My sensor, doing its job.

Here it is on the workbench: the little screen shows the spoilage reading, the green light means "still good," and the red one means "uh oh." When I put it near food that's started going bad, you can actually watch the numbers drop.

All my experiments