Hey y'all and welcome to Common Good.
I'm Luria Freeman.
On today's episode of Common Good, we cover a one
of its kind food pickup app that's reducing food waste
in collaboration with participating restaurants.
So you can download it, it's free for iOS or Android,
and once you open it up,
you're gonna see a little map feature.
If you live in the 12 cities
where we currently operate expanding very quickly,
you'll see all sorts of food shops on there
from grocery stores to local mom and pop shops,
you know, sushi, pizza, really anyone who handles food
on a day to day basis.
All of those businesses typically have some surplus.
And what you're doing is you're going and picking up
that extra food in what we call a surprise bag
for a third of the price.
Surprise bags range all over the map.
So you could get a dozen bagels, you could get three pints
of gelato, you could get loaves of bread, cups
of soup, sandwiches.
We work with a lot of supermarket partners
where maybe you'll get ingredients
so you could get zucchini and bananas
and rotisserie chicken.
It really is genuinely a surprise
and we see such a great reaction to that surprise
- [Luria] In the US, about 40% of food goes to waste.
Too Good to Go has made it its mission
to combat food waste since 2016.
- So if food waste were a country,
it would actually be the third largest emitter
of greenhouse gases after the US and China totaling
about 10% of greenhouse gas emissions overall.
Food waste is a massive issue, needless to say
and that's not even talking
about the resources that go into producing that food.
So about 25% of global freshwater is actually used
to produce food that's never even eaten.
When you have an issue that is that massive
in scale,
Every surprise bag you pick
up is actually the CO2 equivalent
to charging a smartphone 422 times.
We've been in the US for almost two years.
So we've expanded really, really quickly
and the response has been overwhelmingly positive,
I have to say.
And so that really adds up to a ton of CO2, a ton
of impact and a ton of dollars going back into the pockets
of local businesses and consumers saving some money.
I think the impact we're seeing is immense
and the partners really love it.
Rather than throwing that food away that they put
so much love and energy into they now put it
in a surprise bag, they see it go
into a smiling customer's hands.
A lot of the time it's actually a new customer
who has never been to that business before
and you know, we save that CO2.
(exciting music)
Food waste isn't a part of our cultural consciousness.
You know, we go into a supermarket
and we expect that great lineup
of rotisserie chickens, baguettes, baked goods
and we expect that as the last customer
of the day as much as the first.
And so I think the way
that Too Good to Go is really impacting communities is
to start thinking about it as well
and have these conversations with your local shops
in your local online groups, community groups
That's it for today.
Thanks so much for watching this episode
of Common Good, presented by Honda.