Best Food Waste Apps in the UK
Hate wasting food resources? Food waste is one of the big problems in today’s world. It’s is divided into four categories: product food waste, expired products, leftovers, bakery, and packaged food waste. Each type has its problem. Top scientific research on global food challenges and solutions every day, but they still couldn’t find how to change the system behind it. Governments, companies, startups, consumers, we all must do something to stop this craziness. People are still starving in some parts of the earth, while others waste too much. It’s not fair.
The bad news is the UK produces the highest amount of food waste in Europe. The UK wastes around 9.5 million tonnes of food waste in a single year. Potatoes, bread slices, and apples are the most wasted foods.
How can we change this? Is there any alternative way to stop throwing away food products and stop the waste? We can make a difference. Each small step counts. Nowadays, some clever entrepreneurs notice this gap. So they stand up and positively contribute to the zero waste movement by creating these apps below.
Best Food Waste Apps List
Karma
Karma is a Swedish food-waste startup that 18 investors funded in 2016. This great startup is founded by 4 talented young entreprenounrs: Hjalmar Ståhlberg Nordegren, Ludvig Berling, Elsa Bernadotte and Mattis Larsso.
They’re running the world’s least ambitious, most delicious climate movement: Radical Slacktivism. To fight over-production and solve food waste.
They describe themselves as modern-day climate heroes. The kind of people who help save the world by doing the most basic human thing in life – eat stuff.
Karma aims to tackle this issue by offering retailers to sell all their food through them. Every meal purchased helps them analyse the food consumption to provide restaurants with the insights needed to plan their food production perfectly.
Karma has raised $20.2M in funding over five rounds. The latest funding was raised on November 30, 2020, from a Venture-Series Unknown round.
The venture-capital-backed app, Karma, helps restaurants and cafés in the EU and UK reduce food waste. Instead of throwing surplus food away, they can now sell it through Karma.
OLIO
OLIO was founded by businesswomen Tessa Clarke and Saasha Celestial-One, in 2016.
OLIO has flourished into a global sharing movement, starting out as a hyper-local experiment in north London.
OLIO has raised $53.1M in funding over five rounds. They raised their latest funding was raised on September 6, 2021, from a Series B round.
The app encourages neighbours, Food Waste Hero volunteers, and local businesses to share food, among other things, rather than throwing away.
Saasha Celestial-One, Co-founder of OLIO, said;
“A third of the food we produce globally is thrown away, and in the UK, households are responsible for over half of all food waste. The average family throws away £700 worth of food each year. That adds up to £12.5B… £12.5B going straight to landfill!”
Their mission is to unlock the value of food wasted in the home and local community and transform our ‘throw-away society’ into a ‘give away society’ by sharing and wasting less.
Their first investor is Simpleweb, a development agency. Next, they built the MVP (minimal viable product) version of the app.
Then 5 months, they launched the app in the App Store on July 9 2015, quickly followed by Google Play 3 weeks later. The app’s first version was fundamental and could only be used in 5 postcodes in North London. But that didn’t matter; now they are live and ready to bring food sharing to the world!
Kitche
Kitche is a home food waste app recommended by Good Housekeeping, The Guardian, App Store, The Mirror, and The Gadget Show.
Kitche is an impact-led business, and they are on a mission to stop household food waste. The team behind the product wants to build a community whilst growing their business. The app keeps track of your food at home whilst giving you superb features and functionality to ensure a balance between what you buy and eat.
They have spent the last three years improving and optimising Kitche, and now they have an app we are really proud of. Kitche has raised $94.7K (£72K) in funding over 2 rounds. Their latest funding was on August 5, 2021, from a Grant round.
This time (March 2022), they are crowdfunding on Seedrs. You can invest as little as £10 and as much as £100K in Kitche; not only will you have equity, but you can be involved in our new developments, marketing campaigns, and growth plans. More details can be found here.
FoodCloud
FoodCloud was established in 2013 by Iseult Ward and Aoibheann O’Brien, with a shared vision of no good food going to waste.
FoodCloud is a registered charity whose mission is to transform surplus food into opportunities to make the world a kinder place.
FoodCloud is a not-for-profit social enterprise working to tackle the twin issues of food waste and food security. They are a social enterprise matching businesses with surplus food to local charities.
Foodcloud has raised $126K (£95.8K) in funding over 3 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on July 20, 2020, from a Venture-Series Unknown round and community groups.
Additionally, FoodCloud is the partner organisation for the nationwide availability of food element of the FEAD Programme in Ireland, a programme funded by the EU and the Irish Exchequer. They do this by redistributing surplus food from the food industry to a network of charity and community partners.
Nosh Technologies
Nosh app helps users log their groceries’ expiration dates to remind them to use what they bought before it goes bad.
Nosh is founded by Somdip Dey. He is a TED speaker, engineer, scientist, and entrepreneur, tackling food waste and has over 70 intellectual properties.
Nosh Technologies has raised a total of £33K in funding over 2 rounds. Their latest funding was raised on February 3, 2021, from a Pre-Seed round.
Nosh Technologies team believes that if things keep going this way, there will be run on food soon. This is when we cannot afford to waste food and valuable resources.
The company builds algorithms and develops programs and mobile applications to optimise food management and food waste at home.
Users can use nosh and keep track of the food that they have. They can keep track of these items and cook delicious meals with what you have in your stock.
The global waste management industry is rising. The majorly is utilising innovative technologies, and their main aim is to combat the waste crisis and environmental pollution.
More food waste apps will be available on iOS and Android in the near future. These apps are helping restaurants and cafés reduce food waste. For example, instead of throwing surplus food away, they can sell or donate them.
Use them and help stop food waste in the United Kingdom.
There are so many great businesses out there that have a mission to save the environment. Here is a list of 50 recycling companies in the UK.
