Boldly reaching for the new tea variety at the supermarket or once again missing the best-before date on your favourite yoghurt. There are an infinite number of reasons why people and companies throw away an alarming amount of food every day. Numerous food waste apps draw attention to this problem and help to ensure that less food ends up in the trash in the long term.
How food waste apps help reduce food waste
Every year, around 12 million tons of food are wasted throughout Germany. This high figure is composed of various areas. However, more than half of the food waste occurs in private households. According to the Central Food Office every German simply throws away an average of 75 kg of food per year. But restaurants and bakeries also regularly dispose of food that would still be edible.
In the meantime, there are numerous food waste apps that try to counter food waste with different approaches and encourage users to save food.
The food waste apps follow different approaches
Some provide information about leftover meals and food that users can pick up at a reduced price from restaurants or other participating local businesses. Others offer private consumers the opportunity to give away their leftover food to each other.
The 7 best food waste apps against food waste
1. Too Good To Go
The name is program. With the food waste app Too Good To Go offers delicious leftover boxes from local restaurants for sale shortly before closing time. Saving money while doing something good and making new culinary discoveries in your own city is a real invitation to save food.
2. ResQ Club
The food faste app ResQ Club works in a similar way to “Too Good to Go”. The international app allows users to see which restaurants or local businesses are offering their leftover food at the end of the day for a lower price via a map, depending on their location. This makes it perfect for travelling to discover great new restaurants in the respective city and doing good at the same time.
3. UXA
The problem is widespread: too much groceries have been bought and now the holiday or a business trip just around the corner. To prevent the excess food in the fridge from developing a life of its own or even ending up in the bin, the food waste app UXA offers its users the opportunity to enter leftover food in a map and give it away. The food will then be ready for collection at an agreed time.
4. Too good for the bin
Too good for the bin is an educational campaign of the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture. The app provides numerous tips on the topic of shopping, stock planning, shelf life and optimal storage of food. A particularly great feature is the more than 400 recipes that the app provides for using leftover food.
5. Eat Smarter
No more excess leftovers in the fridge and if you do, simply cook them - that's what the food waste app Eat Smarter ensures. Users are provided with suitable recipes for using their own leftovers. The dishes can be filtered according to various categories. In addition to avoiding food waste, users can also aim for a diet that focuses on their own health and fitness.
6. Eating and drinking
Who hasn't experienced it: various leftovers in the fridge that don't fit together and no idea what to cook with them. The app Eating and drinking offers a variety of recipe suggestions when a certain foodstuff is to be used but the cooking idea is still missing. In this way, users of the app can both use leftover food and discover delicious new dishes that they might otherwise never have cooked.
7. Olio
The food waste app Olio digitally replicates the concept of food sharing. Both individuals and local businesses can offer their leftover food for pick-up in the app. This concept is perfect, as it prevents any possible bad purchases from simply ending up in the trash. What is particularly nice about this application is the combination of food rescue as well as social exchange, because often you give another person a lot of joy by giving away food.
