Figures around food waste are astonishing. According to businesswaste.co.uk, over one-third of all food produced globally gets wasted.
And in the UK, we throw away around 9.5 million tonnes of food waste every year. Bread and potatoes are the most wasted products and I must confess that I seem to throw away a lot of bread. You think it’s only one loaf of bread but it quickly adds up – as those shocking figures illustrate.
I’ve been recently inspired to think more about food waste by a friend who absolutely loves the Too Good to Go app. She loves the fact that she is helping reduce food waste and she also likes the ‘surprise’ element of what she might get in one of their bags. Her favourite place to pick up a Too Good to Go bag is Greggs and she’s always reeling off the items she gets given and weighing up the amount it’s all worth versus the small price she has paid. Bags cost £3.30 each and contain at least £10-worth of food. It’s a big ‘win, win’ as far as she is concerned.
One supermarket that has really benefited from Too Good to Go is Aldi, which says it has saved over £7m since the launch of its partnership with the app last year.
The discounter has sold more than 500,000 bags via the surplus food platform since and helped avoid an estimated 1,500 tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Aldi also donates surplus food from its stores through the Neighbourly programme. As such it has donated more than 45 million meals to those in need since 2019.
We’ve all read the stories about people going to superstores at certain times because they know that’s when the best reductions can be found. Technology has made that process easier, linking shoppers to that reduced price food.
The Gander app gives shoppers access to fresh food at reduced prices with offers updated in real time – which sounds great.
The company has just run a trial in Scotland in conjunction with the Snappy Shopper home delivery app. In five Spar stores, Snappy Shopper customers were able to buy reduced-to-clear items from Gander which were delivered as part of their normal shop.
In the trial, 11% of orders included a reduced price Gander product. What a great start; let’s hope the trial is expanded to more stores. Yours could be one of them!
