Vegetables, cereals and fruit are the foods most wasted at home
Credit: Too Good To Go
As early as 2015, a group of Danes who were worried about the huge waste of food in their country created a company which trades as Too Good To Go.
Simple as an App that covers most of Europe
The concept in many ways is simple as their App introduces companies with food that is about to go out of date to consumers who would like to save money and do their bit to save the planet.
Now, restaurants are involved and as far as Europe is concerned, the business operates in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
To some extent, the consumer is taking a bit of a risk in as much as they can’t choose what items may be in any particular box of food, but they do benefit from substantial discounts from usual retail price.
Food waste is reduced and consumers benefit from low prices
The App connects restaurants and stores that have unsold, surplus food, with customers who can then buy whatever food the outlet considers surplus to requirements at a much lower price than normal (sometimes just a third of the original price).
There’s a lot of computer projection as companies actually alert TGTG at the beginning of each day as to what they expect to be unsold by the end of the day and the consumer has the chance to find offers in their particular area and place an order which they then have to collect.
Either side can cancel within a couple of hours of due collection date and the latest innovation is Too Good To Go Parcels where delivery can be made direct to the home.
More than 150 millions customers help reduce food waste
According to the company it has more than 150 million customers worldwide served by 150,000 businesses and this is growing all of the time, especially as it has expanded into Canada, UK and USA.
The additional downside to food waste
The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) stated in 2024 that 10 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions are caused by food waste, 25 per cent of fresh water used annually goes to food that is ultimately wasted, 11.5 per cent of agricultural land worldwide is used annually for the production of food that ends up being wasted and $1.1 billion is the amount of money lost each year due to food waste.
This information, coupled with the staggering facts confirmed by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) that 2.4 billion people do not have access to adequate and nutritious food and 783 million people are affected by hunger every day shows how important it is to reduce food waste and also in the long run, redirect production in order to service those who don’t have adequate access to food.
