A few days ago I once again picked up a Too Good To Go surprise bag at our local Spar. Nothing special really. Normally I don’t even post about it. A bag full of products that would otherwise be thrown away — nice to have, but nothing I consciously think about on a daily basis. Until I read an article in de Volkskrant this week. About food waste. About figures I didn’t really know, and to be honest, they hit me quite hard.
The figures that make you swallow hard
Did you know that about one third of all the food produced worldwide is thrown away? Thirty to forty percent, according to Mette Lykke, CEO of the Danish company Too Good To Go. And that accounts for 10 percent of global CO₂ emissions. As much as the total food production of a country like China!!
Altogether, all that wasted food represents a value of 1.1 trillion dollars — comparable to the combined GDP of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. And the most painful part: a quarter of that wasted food would be enough to feed everyone who is hungry.
Too Good To Go is trying to do something about this. By now more than 85 million people worldwide are using the app, of which 3.9 million in the Netherlands. And that number is still growing. Too Good To Go is a social impact enterprise, with the mission to inspire and motivate everyone to fight food waste. Of course, it also generates solid revenue.
Still perfectly edible
We all notice that groceries are getting more expensive. Right now we should be extra careful with what we buy. And yet we still throw away a shockingly large amount. According to Mette Lykke, this is often due to confusion about expiration dates. Many people don’t really know the difference between “use by” and “best before.” To be safe, they just throw it out. Unnecessary — because “best before” usually means: often still fine after that. So: look, smell, taste, don’t waste.
A small tip you can start with tonight. Just check what’s left in the fridge, and maybe make a nice soup on Sunday with the leftovers.
Three more weeks, and then I’m off to Turkey with five young people! Host country Turkey is organizing an Erasmus+ Youth Exchange in Sivas, with young people from Poland, Serbia, the Netherlands, and Macedonia. Theme: food waste.
In the run-up to this trip we’re diving into the numbers, stories, and solutions. I’m taking one key question with me: how do young people in other countries look at this? Is food waste also such a blind spot there as it is here? I’m curious.
