Watch your waste

The removal men had almost finished loading up the lorries when Tessa Clarke realised she still had fresh food in her fridge that wouldn’t travel – and she couldn’t bear to throw it away. After trying, in vain, to give it away, Tessa grew frustrated that, in a world where millions go hungry, her leftover sweet potatoes, cabbage and yogurts would be heaped on top of the billions of tonnes of food that goes to waste each year – some 10 million tonnes of that from the UK alone, according to the Waste And Resources Action Programme.

It would have been understandable if, once settled in her new Wiltshire home, Tessa – then the mother of a baby and a toddler – had forgotten all about the perishables she’d had to bin. Instead, her frustration about this unnecessary waste spurred her on and together with a friend she created the food sharing app, Olio.

Olio connects neighbours with each other and local businesses so that surplus food can be shared, not binned. Food nearing its sell-by date in shops, unsold bread from nearby bakers, excess home-grown vegetables and the contents of fridges that would otherwise go off while people are on holiday, are all regularly shared through the app.

‘I grew up on my parents’ dairy farm in North Yorkshire,’ says Tessa. ‘As a result, I learned pretty much as soon as I could walk how much work goes into producing the food we eat. I also shared their firm belief that food is meant to be eaten, not thrown away.

‘And yet, more than a third of the food we produce globally ends up in the bin, with the average family in the UK chucking out £730 worth each year. That adds up to a shocking £14bn – and an awful lot going to landfill.’

Seven years down the line, six million people have joined the Olio app, and 53 million portions of food that would have otherwise gone to waste have been redistributed. The app allows individuals and businesses to advertise surplus food, with anyone interested arranging pick-up directly with the lister.

‘The environmental impact of this is equivalent to taking 154 million car miles off the road,’ says Tessa. ‘We have also saved 7.8 billion litres of water as a lot of this is used in food production.’

We must all face up to the impact that decades of excess is having on our planet, and giving away surplus supplies – or eating food that would otherwise go to waste – is one effective way of reducing our carbon footprint.

To this end, Olio is just one of the many apps and organisations set up in recent years to tackle the issue, while at the same time feeding those who are struggling financially.

Jamie Crummie, co-founder of fellow food waste-fighting app Too Good To Go, became aware of the problem in 2013 while working for an events company to support himself through a law degree.

‘I was blown away by the amount of food that was being thrown out every day,’ says Jamie. ‘Then, a couple of years later, I was volunteering in Calais and met many climate refugees [people forced to leave their homes due to floods, storms, wildfires and extreme temperatures] and saw, first-hand, the social-environmental impact of climate change.

‘We are throwing away almost 40% of the food we produce and this is feeding climate change by causing 10% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. To put that into context, plastic waste – and we all know how damaging that is – accounts for 3.8% of greenhouse gas emissions.’

Jamie was just 24 when in 2015, together with his co-founders, he set up a website, now an app, through which subscribers could arrange to buy a bag of surplus perishables for a fraction of the price from local food outlets.

Its 8.5 million UK users include families struggling to make ends meet who collect bags of produce from their local supermarket, as well as people looking to sample the soon-to-be-thrown wares of pricier delicatessens, cafés and bakeries.

Although you get a fair amount of food for your money from the 20,000-plus registered outlets – the cost varies depending on the seller but is usually just a few pounds – you don’t get to choose what’s in your ‘magic bag’ and are unlikely to be able to rustle up a meal from its often random contents. Still, its users can take solace in the knowledge that they have helped save around 11 million ‘magic bags’ – each weighing around 1kg – from landfill, since the company launched.

But just how does the superficially harmless act of dumping food from the fridge into the bin have such a negative impact on the environment? ‘By wasting the food we grow we waste all of the resources that have gone into producing it,’ says Jamie. ‘Rainforests are chopped down to make room to grow food crops, which then have to be watered.

‘There’s the fertiliser used in the soil, which drains into our rivers, poisoning the waters, plus the fuel to transport the food from warehouses to supermarkets – where it’s stored in big industrial fridges that use a lot of energy – and finally on to our homes. If it then ends up in the bin, all of those emissions have been produced in vain.’

In 2016, Mark Game launched The Bread And Butter Thing, which provides families with three bags of surplus food – enough for four days’ meals – for £7.50. He points out that while many of us may want to blame the food industry, the majority of waste now comes from the home.

‘Two decades ago there was 14 million tonnes of food waste in the UK every year – half of it domestic and half industrial – and that figure is now down to ten million,’ he says. ‘But while industry has reduced the amount it throws away by four million tonnes, domestically the amount hasn’t gone down at all, meaning that 70% of waste is now being generated in people’s homes.’

Mark’s charity gets its supplies direct from farms, manufacturers and distribution centres that supply supermarkets, which begs the question why these businesses, whose aim it is to return maximum profit, produce so much surplus. ‘The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012 was a classic example of how things can go wrong,’ says Mark. ‘The long-range forecast was telling everybody how wonderful the weather was going to be but it poured down, so all the meat producers were left with huge stocks of fresh burgers and sausages that the supermarkets didn’t order because their customers wouldn’t want to barbecue.

‘Industry is getting a lot better at it, but demand can be hard to predict.’

The Bread And Butter Thing has 60 hubs across the north of England from where anyone in need can collect groceries: one bag of fruit and vegetables, another containing chilled or frozen food, and a third filled with tins and packets for the cupboard – around £30 worth of food for a quarter of the price.

But, other than volunteering with one of these providers, is there anything we can do on an individual level if, say, we cook more food than we can eat?

Conscious of how many were struggling during the first lockdown in 2020, Hayley Steere came up with a great model for sharing, rather than binning, surplus portions through her Facebook group and website, Free My Meal. There are now more than 30,000 registered users either offering or requesting meals in their local area.

‘Lots of people are under financial strain in the aftermath of the pandemic and now, as a result of the cost-of-living crisis, the offer of a meal can be very welcome,’ says Hayley.

‘Some recipients are single parents, going without food to feed their kids, others are on low incomes, living in social housing, and some are elderly and facing the choice between eating or heating their homes.’

Meanwhile, the charity FoodCycle goes a step further by helping build communities and tackle loneliness.

Volunteers cook three-course meals, using donations of surplus food from supermarkets, greengrocers and corner shops, and invite people to sit and eat at one of its 60 kitchens in areas of high deprivation across the UK. Some of the guests are homeless or refugees, while others are families struggling to make ends meet, or older people who simply enjoy the social aspect. Since its launch in 2009, FoodCycle has provided more than two million meals, rescuing 994 tonnes of food.

‘All the food is vegetarian, which is better from a food safety point of view, but also makes it very inclusive, including cross-culturally,’ says CEO Mary McGrath.

‘Even before the cost-of-living crisis, there were eight million people in food poverty in the UK, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, and latest figures from British Gas show that four in ten of us can’t afford heating, so that’s 40% of people who are likely to have to forgo food to stay warm.

‘In that context, it’s shocking that so much food is thrown away. But we can all do our bit to address food poverty and food waste and, in doing so, have a significant impact on climate change.’

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