Current:Home > InvestWant to fight climate change and food waste? One app can do both -Wealth Legacy Solutions
Want to fight climate change and food waste? One app can do both
PredictIQ Quantitative Think Tank Center View
Date:2025-03-11 05:02:54
More than a third of food grown in the U.S. goes uneaten, and that percentage has increased in the past five years. Much of that food ends up in landfills, where it decomposes, creating a potent gas that contributes to global warming.
A company based in Denmark has spent the past eight years working to bring that percentage down by helping restaurants sell food cheaply.
Too Good To Go works with businesses to sell their end-of-day leftovers for 60%-80% off. By matching hungry, cost-conscious customers with surplus food, the app's creators say they minimize waste, one bag of saved food at a time.
"I think it's doing that on a micro scale and having a macro impact," says Chris MacAulay, the app's U.S. country manager.
The app started in Denmark in 2015. Today there are participating stores in 17 countries and more than a dozen U.S. cities including New York, Phoenix and Seattle. Several cities including Santa Barbara, Minneapolis and Atlanta just started participating this year. The company claims Los Angeles is its most successful city yet. Next, it's headed to cities in the southeast.
MacAulay says the cheaper price tag and the recouped business costs are great side effects, but that's not the main point. "The kernel of the why is really around reducing food waste," he says. "Because it's such a large contributor to CO2e."
CO2e stands for the carbon dioxide equivalent of a product's total planet-warming gas emissions.
When someone buys a "surprise bag," the app adds that purchase to the consumer's lifetime climate impact tally. It displays all the electricity and the carbon emissions prevented from going to waste.
"We've saved over 250 million meals," MacAulay says. "That's one meal every three seconds. So if you think about the scale, it is having an impact."
Rotten food in landfills makes a potent planet-warming gas called methane. The climate impact also includes the land and water used to grow that food and the gas used to power the trucks and factories that prepare and transport food.
According to the app's estimate, that translates to taking about 135,000 cars off the road for a year.
"That's a huge amount, especially considering that in the U.S. all food loss and waste accounts for about 6% of our total greenhouse gas emissions footprint," says Alexandria Coari with the food waste nonprofit ReFED, where she's the vice president of capital, innovation and engagement.
Coari says companies like Too Good To Go have the potential to reduce the equivalent carbon emissions of 870,000 cars in a year. "Marked-down alert apps like that of Too Good To Go are one of the top 10 solutions to fighting food loss and waste as well as climate change," she says.
These apps are especially popular among businesses that produce baked goods, since they can't sell stale food the next day. So there's no shortage of pastries, doughnuts, pizzas and bagels available.
"I think in the areas where they've tried to expand into retail grocery, even into manufacturing, there's still a little bit to be figured out there," Coari says.
Grocery stores increasingly have programs to divert food waste, by repurposing unsold produce into pre-made meals, providing in-store clearance sections and partnering with local food banks.
MacAulay says there is an especially high demand for bags from the grocery partners the app has.
"That's one of our responsibilities is to continue to broaden the selection on the app," says MacAulay. "We know that there are really popular surprise bags out there. And we want to make sure that people have a chance to get them."
veryGood! (89955)
Related
- Civic engagement nonprofits say democracy needs support in between big elections. Do funders agree?
- GOLDEN BLOCK SERVICES PTY LTD
- Kmart’s blue light fades to black with the shuttering of its last full-scale US store
- Mack Brown apologizes for reaction after North Carolina's loss to James Madison
- SFO's new sensory room helps neurodivergent travelers fight flying jitters
- 'Octomom' Nadya Suleman becomes grandmother after son, daughter-in-law welcome baby girl
- Finding a Fix for Playgrounds That Are Too Hot to Touch
- The last of 8 escaped bulls from a Massachusetts rodeo is caught on highway
- Small twin
- Sean Diddy Combs Predicts His Arrest in Haunting Interview From 1999
Ranking
- US appeals court rejects Nasdaq’s diversity rules for company boards
- Family of Missouri woman murdered in home 'exasperated' as execution approaches
- Exclusive: Watch 'The Summit' learn they have 14 days to climb mountain for $1 million
- GOLDEN BLOCK SERVICES PTY LTD
- Tree trimmer dead after getting caught in wood chipper at Florida town hall
- MLB power rankings: Late-season collapse threatens Royals and Twins' MLB playoff hopes
- What Each Sign Needs for Libra Season, According to Your Horoscope
- Cyrus Langston: Tips Of Using The Average Directional Index (ADX)
Recommendation
Whoopi Goldberg is delightfully vile as Miss Hannigan in ‘Annie’ stage return
Man pleads guilty to Michigan killing that stoked anti-immigrant campaign rhetoric
'Very precious:' Baby boy killed by Texas death row inmate Travis James Mullis was loved
MLB power rankings: Late-season collapse threatens Royals and Twins' MLB playoff hopes
Google unveils a quantum chip. Could it help unlock the universe's deepest secrets?
The NYPD often shows leniency to officers involved in illegal stop and frisks, report finds
3 Tufts men’s lacrosse players remain hospitalized with rare muscle injury
The Vision and Future of QTM Community – Comprehensive Investment Support for You