OLIO: sharing food and cutting waste with a new food service

News24xx.com - OLIO is an online application, developed by the type of social networks. It’s main purpose is to attract people to the universal exchange of food. Thus, users of the service are more rational with food and help reduce the amount of food waste.

After creating an account, users are encouraged to upload photos and descriptions of product, which they have in abundance. For example, a rich harvest of vegetables, excessive conservation stocks or the remains of other foods. Since launching application in the UK, in early 2016, OLIO began to use 322000 users, who conducted about 400000 transactions through the application. A third of the average users of OLIO are households with small incomes.

"The global food system is irrationally using food resources and obviously requires radical changes,- says Tessa Cook, co-founder of OLIO. - A third of all food, produced globally, is wasted."

To create the application Cook was inspired by an incident when she wanted to share the remains of her food with someone on the street, but could not find anyone. "The problem was that no one knew about my offer",- she said.

When Cook realized that at the time there was no food exchange application, she and Sasha Celestial-Van, a former investment banker, founded OLIO. They invested in the company 1.65 million pounds sterling.

Currently, OLIO cooperates with cafes and supermarkets to reduce food waste. This has a positive impact not only on doing business, but also on the attitude to food of many consumers.