Food Waste – A Massive Problem
Roughly one-third of food produced globally for human consumption every year gets lost or wasted.
This means that currently, food waste accounts for about 8% of total global greenhouse gas emissions. If food waste were a country, it would be the third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world.
Photo by Anita Jankovic on Unsplash
Food waste also costs the global economy an estimated $1.2 trillion a year, making it a significant economic issue, as well as an environmental one.
Thankfully, there are many great organizations like ‘Too Good To Go’ out there working to tackle this problem!
What is ‘Too Good To Go?’
Too Good To Go is an anti-food waste app that helps to tackle food waste by providing a platform for restaurants, grocery stores, and cafes to sell surplus food at discounted prices.
The app first launched in Copenhagen in 2016 and has since attracted over 30 million users worldwide, preventing over 59 million meals from going to waste since its launch.
Here’s how it works:
- Food vendors sign up with Too Good To Go, and whenever they have surplus food, or food nearing its expiration date, they offer it at a discounted price through the Too Good To Go platform, instead of throwing it out.
- After downloading the app, customers can browse through the offers in their area.
- When a customer finds a deal they like, they purchase it through the app at a discounted price, and a digital receipt is generated which they can present to the vendor to receive their food.
By reducing food waste, making discounted food available to hungry folks, and helping businesses make a little extra cash, the Too Good To Go app really is a win-win-win solution.
But What About the Packaging?
Of course, more food being sold can lead to more single-use-packaging being used.
To minimize the impact of this, Too Good To Go offers to provide its partners with packaging made of FSC certified, or Kraft paper, but encourages partners to allow customers to bring their own reusable containers whenever possible; something Ozarka is certainly on board with!