App stops surplus food going in bin
MORE than 120,000 items of food have been shared rather than binned since an app to tackle food waste launched this summer.
Households are responsible for half of all food waste in the UK, binning more than £12.5billion of edible food a year, at a cost of £700 to the average family.
Co-founder Tessa Cook, previously managing director of payday loans giant Wonga, said: ‘I’m a farmer’s daughter. I was bought up to understand how much work goes into producing all of this food. The inspiration for Olio came a year and a half ago when I was moving country and found myself with some good food I couldn’t bring myself to throw away. I realised the problem was people who lived near me just didn’t know it was available. I thought there was an app for everything, and was amazed to discover there wasn’t one for sharing surplus food.’
She said her friend Saasha Celestial-One ‘was bought up by hippies’ in Iowa and ‘got it instantly’. Olio, which is currently free to download, allows people and businesses to upload a photo of a food item and alert people nearby.
Olio has partnered with Sainsbury’s to distribute unsold food too.
Cook said: ‘It’s only in the past 50 years that we’ve retreated into our families, becoming a bit more divorced from our local community partly because of technology.
‘Olio is using technology to reconnect people and communities, and enable them to share our most precious resource, which is food and drink.’