What's for dinner? - Leftovers!

We all know food waste is an issue and feel bad throwing out old produce. Still, today's post is about showing the magnitude of this problem and some digital innovations trying to fix it.

Globally, about one third of produced food is wasted every year and the associated emissions have reached 3.3 billion tons of CO2 equivalents (a common way to measure greenhouse gases). For comparison, the entire European Union emitted about 3.9 billion tons in 2017, and if emissions from food waste were emitted by a single country it would be the third worldwide (after China and the US). Clearly, food waste acts as a significant driver of climate change and needs to be adressed urgently. Today I will introduce various types of digital innovations tacking this by involving consumers and businesses with different models.

One approach is connecting consumers conveniently with an app to check discounted close-to-expiration food/meals by local businesses. You can now connect to restaurants in Boston and New York with Food for All or goMkt and pick up your order at the resturant. In 14 European countries and the US you can pick up food from bakeries, grocery stores and restaurants with Too Good to Go which also offers a "magic box" containing surprise meals or groceries. For the Canadians out there, Flashfood shows discounted food close to expiration in participating supermarkets. NoFoodWasted does the same thing in the Netherlands and knowing this would have probably saved me some money during my studies!

Mitakus takes a different perspective and aims at enabling restaurants to order less food in the first place. Their solutions is a web-based software generating precise forecasts and recommendations through AI algorithms using external and internal data inputs. The food hospitality needs to order more accurately, especially considering that fresh, perishable ingredients are increasingly popular (yay salads, nay carbs).

These were just a few innovations providing a tremendous opportunity for consumers to save money, businesses to adhere to regulations and both to have a quantifiable, positive impact. What I personally like is that there are different digital solutions to decrease food waste but nonetheless joint by the same mission. Maybe one of these apps will be on your homescreen soon!