Three Spanish candidates for the European Patent Office's ‘Young Inventors 2025 Awards’.

Three Spanish candidates for the European Patent Office's ‘Young Inventors 2025 Awards’.

Food waste is one of the biggest problems in the world today. Each of us wastes an average of 132 kg of food every year, 59 million tons in the European Union (EU) alone. This huge amount of food represents an estimated loss of around 132 billion. However, is the food we throw away bad?

Trying to give a good answer to this question is what has led three Spanish researchers to be among the 10 candidates for the ‘Young Inventors Award 2025’, awarded by the European Patent Office (EPO). The founders of the company Oscillum, Pilar Granado, Pablo Sosa and Luis Chimeno, have developed biodegradable smart labels that show the state of food in real time.

The Young Inventors Award recognises innovators around the world up to the age of 30 who are using technology to tackle the big global challenges posed by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), highlighting the transformative power of youth-driven solutions and honouring extraordinary young people who are paving the way for a more sustainable future. Oscillum's smart labels contribute to several of these goals, such as SDG 2 (Zero Hunger), SDG 3 (Health and Wellbeing), SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) and SDG 13 (Climate Action).

Los premios especiales de la edición de 2025, entre ellos los tres galardones especiales y el Premio del Público (elegido por votación online), se otorgarán durante una ceremonia retransmitida en directo desde Islandia el 18 de junio de 2025.

The special prizes for the 2025 edition, including the three special awards and the People's Choice Award (chosen by online voting), will be awarded during a ceremony broadcast live from Iceland on 18 June 2025.

Each of the 10 finalists, known as ‘Tomorrow Shapers’, will receive a cash prize.

In addition, three of them will receive a special award from the following categories: World Builders, Community Healers and Guardians of Nature.

The labels for which these young Spaniards have been nominated change color to indicate to consumers whether the food is still fresh and can be eaten or not. As bacteria multiply in the food, they release a series of compounds that cause a visible color change on the label. This information allows consumers to make better food safety decisions and thus reduce the amount of food waste generated each year. Until now, consumers have had to rely on standard expiry dates and the appearance of products to assess their condition.

This innovation addresses the limitations of current freshness indicators, such as time-temperature labels, which only relate food spoilage to failures in the cold chain. By directly analyzing bacterial growth and volatile organic compounds, smart labels offer greater accuracy in real time, adding to the accuracy of food safety indicators.

By minimising unnecessary waste of good food, this invention helps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote a more efficient food system.

The idea grew out of a domestic dilemma for the researchers themselves, who shared a flat as students at the Miguel Hernández University in Elche. These applied science enthusiasts had to decide whether to eat or throw away a food item based on its appearance alone. ‘One Sunday, Pablo found a piece of meat in the fridge that looked bad and smelled funny, but he still decided to cook it and eat it... In the end, nothing happened to it. That got us thinking about how many times we, ourselves included, throw away food just because it looks bad. That's when we started to imagine simple and intuitive ways to know if a product is still fit for consumption’, say Luis Chimeno and Pilar Granado.

To turn this idea into a viable business, the team participated in entrepreneurship support programmes and collaborations with companies to perfect their technology. They received funding from the Centre for Technological Development and Innovation (CDTI) and participated in several competitions.

From the outset, the team prioritised protecting their invention through a patent.

More about the project

https://www.epo.org/en/news-events/young-inventors-prize