Facts you should know about Food Waste & "Too Good To Go" Application

Food waste is a major problem now-a-days in developed countries like America and Europe. Majority of the food waste comes from restaurants and other retail distributors where quality of product is first priority.

Some alarming facts about Food wastage which you should know:

• Roughly one-third of the food produced in the world is wasted every year (approximately 1.3 billion tons).

• Every year, consumers in rich countries waste almost 222 million tons of food whereas the entire net food production of Sub-Saharan Africa is 230 million tons approximately.

• Per capita waste by consumers is between 95 to 115 kg per year in Europe and North America, whereas it is only 6-11 kg per year in Sub-Saharan Africa, south and Southeastern Asia.

Too good to go mobile application

In all over Europe, there is a trend in food sector to throw the remaining fresh food items to uphold the quality of food and hygiene standards. Such practice undoubtedly brings high-value customer satisfaction, trust and is highly commendable but it also causes wastage of food in larger quantity.

Certainly developed countries like Europe and USA can afford such "arrogance" but in today’s era of sustainable development goals (SDG) and carbon neutrality, is it not a white-collar crime to keep following such practice in the name of quality maintenance and customer satisfaction?

We live in a world where more than 1 billion people suffer from hunger and in every 5 seconds, a child dies because of hunger or of directly related causes. Certainly, the condition is different in developed nations where the priority is more on Quality of food other than its utilization but this ignorance of reality cannot support such activity.

Various steps have been taken to reduce the wastage of food. One of such step is the "Too Good To Go" mobile app which is in association with various restaurants of Europe preventing the food wastage by selling it to desired consumer at highly discount rate. It allows both, the consumers and restaurants to prevent the food items from going to bin and using it judiciously. Thus, it saves a large quantity of food from going to the bin and in turn generating a profit out of it.

I have been traveling within Europe for past two years and was always perturbed from this act of throwing good quality fresh food to waste bin instead of selling it in lower price to ensure its full utilization. I was not aware of such mobile application, which significantly reduces food wastage and in turn makes the world a better place to live.

Nevertheless, such apps should be promoted to ensure not a single grain of food should ever go wasted again.