Rui is the founder of FreshTag and a winner of Innovate UK Young Innovator Award for an invention which could change the world. Her breakthrough idea will allow consumers to see at a glance whether the food they buy is safe to eat.
Rui’s motivation is her dislike of food going to waste and the ruinous environmental damage that occurs through the carbon emissions released during the manufacturing and farming processes.
In the course of graduating with a Fashion and Smart Textiles degree from the Royal College of Art (RCA), Rui’s idea to change from the generic ‘best before’ and ‘use by’ dating mechanism to a more adaptable and dynamic monitoring system began to take shape.
FreshTag is now developing a sustainably produced packaging solution to eliminate food waste and reduce consumer dependence on plastic-based films and packaging and unreliable “Use-by” dates. The tool she is working on will offer information about the food and environmental conditions in real-time, detecting and indicating food freshness. The mechanism of the technology lies behind a special ink that changes colour in the presence of ammonia and carbon dioxide using inkjet printing technology.
This materials designer and entrepreneur set up FreshTag in 2019 and is currently working on bringing into effect legislation that allows FreshTag to operate in the market as an aid to the existing date code system