Globally, over a third of all food produced for human consumption, worth over $1tn, goes to waste each year. It’s a global issue that OLIO is tackling by tapping into the sharing economy and trying to normalise sharing perfectly decent but unwanted food. OLIO want us to share more and waste less – a very simple message with potentially huge benefits.

OLIO is an app that allows people and businesses to share surplus food rather than see it go to waste, OLIO was founded in 2015 by Tessa Clarke and Saasha Celestial-One, whose mission when they set out was to ‘to eliminate avoidable food waste in the home and the local community’. The food-sharing startup has now raised over $10m in funding, has 1.7m users across 49 countries and recruited over 40,000 super-fans to help them on its mission.

Tackling food waste is a necessity

The climate emergency is firmly in the cultural consciousness, and individuals and businesses are making plenty of necessary steps to reduce their environmental impact. We are moving to a world of electric cars, living plastic-free and going vegan, so it seems crazy that more attention is not being paid to reducing our food waste – particularly when you hear the size of the issue.

• All the world’s nearly one billion hungry people could be fed on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe

• 25% of the world’s freshwater supply is used to grow food that is never eaten

• If food waste were a country, it would be the 3rd largest emitter of greenhouse gases (after China & the USA).

Perhaps one solution to the environmental crisis could start by looking in our fridge?

Stop being weird

Rather than lead with the environmental case, OLIO is taking its message to communities with a simple provocation – when did sharing food become weirder than wasting it? 

At a time when we are happy to rent homes from strangers and ride-share in the name of saving money, it seems so odd that we wouldn’t share surplus food with strangers whilst doing good for the environment, too. 

OLIO is doing what many challengers do, which is to create an entirely new category. In this case, food-sharing. And by challenging the culture surrounding wasting food, it is trying to normalise what may seem an alien concept and behaviour to many.

As Deliveroo and Uber Eats battle it out for food on demand, why shouldn’t we look to our neighbours first?

To spread the word, OLIO has developed three tiers of volunteers – Ambassador, Food Waste Hero and Squad Starter – to help it build relationships with businesses and build local communities. All brands want their super-fans to help them recruit new users, but this proactive recruitment by OLIO has been so successful that, at one time, the team struggled to process all the requests they were getting.

By tapping into the sharing economy model, with some clever recruitment tactics and a dollop of humour, OLIO is creating a new category for themselves that happens to do a lot of good.

2020 may be a big year for plant-based, but for OLIO and local communities across the world, it could well be the year for zero-waste too.

Ben Cooper is a Strategy Director at eatbigfish – a strategic brand consultancy specialising in challenger thinking and behaviour.