On the Ground With Apps Preventing Food Waste

Here’s food for thought: Between 30 percent and 40 percent of the annual food supply is wasted or lost in the US annually. It’s the carrots shaped like pretzels that retailers decide are too ugly to be sold, day-old bread from the local bakery, or wilting lettuce forgotten in the back of the refrigerator. A family of four spends $1,500 each year on food that ends up in the landfill.

As it rots, it emits methane, a greenhouse gas that for the first 20 years of its life in the atmosphere has 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide. What’s worse is that while all that edible food percolates in the dump, one in eight American adults is experiencing food insecurity.

Luther Jackson pantry. Photography courtesy of Jenna von Elling.

But like many modern-day problems, there’s an app for that.

These apps connect farmers, restaurants, and grocery stores that have extra food that might otherwise go to waste, with folks who bring it back into circulation. “If some of these apps can change how we think about food and can include educational components and resources, this may help their customers spread the word about the importance of reducing food waste,” says Dr. Tammara Soma, director of research for Simon Fraser University’s Food Systems Lab.

Too Good to Go

Too Good to Go’s app is a location-based service free for download in every Canadian province and in 30 cities across the US from New York to Phoenix. “What users in one community will see differs from what someone 40 miles away in another city will see,” says Sarah Soteroff, senior public relations manager for Too Good to Go Canada and the United States.

The app user finds restaurants, grocery stores, bakeries, and donut shops within their own neighborhoods that, at the end of the day, find themselves with a surplus. The retailer may not want to store the food overnight, and, sometimes, food regulations prevent the reheating of day-old restaurant meals that makes those three leftover slices of pizza unsaleable.

“It’s based on the surplus of that day and what the store has. It’s unpredictable, so we make it a surprise bag,” says Soteroff. It could, for example, be three dozen donuts divided into four to a bag. Too Good to Go makes $1.99 from the purchase of each bag, and it recommends bags sell for between $3.99 and $9.99. The products in the bag are usually, according to Soteroff, discounted by a third of the original price.

The app keeps track of how much money the user has saved by buying food destined for the landfill as compared to what it would cost at full price. “Apps like these,” says Soma, “may help restaurants reduce the amount of food that is wasted at the end of the day, especially when people are motivated by cheaper prices.”

The app launched in Denmark in 2016, and it now has 90 million users globally. It has saved American consumers an estimated $127 million on food they otherwise would have bought at full price, and it has earned $41 million for businesses that otherwise would have tossed food away.

Every time a surprise bag is sold, 2.5 kilograms of Co2 equivalent (Co2e) is diverted from the landfill and atmosphere, with approximately 35 million kg of Co2e diverted in the US. The app personalizes this for the user, by providing a running tally of the CO2e they’ve kept out of the landfill through the purchase of surprise bags and, subsequently, the difference they’ve individually made to global warming.

Food Rescue US

In 2011, one in seven Connecticut households was experiencing food insecurity, while more than 36 million tons of food was being tossed out across the US. This didn’t make sense to Jeff Schacher, a software developer, and Kevin Mullins, a local pastor, from Fairfax County, Connecticut. They founded Community Plates (now Food Rescue US) and created a model of food rescue that depicts the true meaning of the adage “waste not, want not.”

“We were born out of a problem and a solution,” says James Hart, development director for Food Rescue US.

Businesses agree to donate food, and not-for-profit social service organizations such as shelters, soup kitchens, and food pantries agree to take it. The app’s secret to success is the volunteers who sign up to rescue food and deliver it to the organizations in need. The app gives detailed instructions on where to pick up the food and where to take it. Anyone can sign into the app and claim a food recovery in their area.

For Jenna von Elling, a parent volunteer at Luther Jackson Middle School in Falls Church Virginia, Food Rescue US has made a huge difference to her school community. “At the start of the pandemic, we wondered how we were going to keep the school pantry stocked for families,” she says. After a quick Google search, she discovered Food Rescue US and the pantry has not been without food since.

Twice a week, von Elling and her fellow food rescuers fill two SUVs full of food they claim and recover from the local Target grocery store. What they bring back to the school pantry includes produce that is nearing the end of its grocery store shelf life but is still edible. There are also chicken breasts and other meat nearing best-before dates to boxes of diapers that are damaged.

Since its founding, the organization has expanded to 23 states, provided 152 million meals to those in need, kept 183 million pounds of excess food out of landfills, and boasts 20,000 volunteer food rescues.

Misfits Market

Misfits tackles food loss at the beginning of its life cycle, including, what Rose Hartley, head of sustainability for Misfits, calls “cosmetically challenged” produce.

“What we have been hearing from farmers,” she says, “is that they need an outlet to be able to sell this produce.”

Misfits buys the twisted zucchini, the sunburnt cauliflower, and the pepper that’s grown into a cylinder instead of a bell, and makes the produce available via the app in the form of a food box delivered directly to the user’s doorstep. Subscribers can expect a 30-percent savings compared to food bought at the grocery store.

Sign into the app, anywhere in the contiguous US, and subscribe to a weekly or bi-weekly box, or choose a flex plan to shop as needed. Boxes also contain rejected shelf products—maybe the packaging is crinkled, or the printing of the label is slightly off-center, and, therefore, rejected by the store.

“We are trying to fill that gap that buyers back out of,” says Hartley. “The hope and the dream is that we create a different conception of what good food looks like.”

She admits though that change of this scale could take decades. In the meantime, Misfits continues to recover unwanted food. In 2023, it prevented 26, 444,000 pounds of food from going to waste across the US.

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