I joined the Food Waste Revolution! I’m going to help make a change. So what is it all about?

So much food can be lost or wasted along the chain from farm to table. It’s not just the food itself that goes to waste, it’s all the resources that went into making it, from water to land and labour. When wasted, food has a harmful effect on the environment – it’s responsible for 8% of the global greenhouse gas emissions which we all know is bad news for the planet!

Too Good to Go aims to help with that by offering ”Magic Bags’. So what’s so magic about them? The ‘food waste’ that they are talking about is the unsold food from bakeries that they have to bake fresh everyday or restaurants that didn’t sell all the food they had prepared. By downloading their app, you can find who is offering a ‘Magic Bag’ and at what time of day. Then it’s just a case of purchasing it for a small amount (mine was £1.75) and showing up at the allocated time with your receipt which is displayed in your app. You you won’t know exactly what you’re getting until you pick it up, but by the power of elimination, if you know the type of food that is sold at that venue, you can have a pretty good idea.

So off I trotted on Friday afternoon to grab my Magic Bag, full of anticipation as I know they sell sandwiches, cakes, muffins and all sorts of goodies. However, when I arrived and showed my app they seemed very surprised that I was there and told me there was hardly anything left and asked if I could come back the following day! It wasn’t possible unfortunately, so off they went to find ‘something’. When she came back she gave me two baguettes and mentioned that Fridays were not good days for using the app as they could still sell a lot of their items the following day. I get that, I do, but if that is the case, why advertise that it is available? Surely I’m only supposed to be picking up stuff that they cannot sell the following day? Isn’t that the whole point?

It’s not the £1.75 that I spent, after all, the baguettes were easily far more than that each. It wasn’t the fact that there were only baguettes and no sweet treats as promised. And it wasn’t the fact that there wasn’t even a bag! (I had to ask for one and reluctantly it was provided). It was the fact that my £1.75 was supposed to be part of the TooGoodToGo vision of a world with no waste and that my small action today could have big consequences – not sure that is the case if they are scrapping around to give me something that they could indeed sell the following day – that means it’s not waste?

So my Food Revolution did not get off to a good start. I may give it another go, it may just be my choice of venue or day of the week that let this venture down. But so far, my ‘Magic Bag’ scored a big fat zero on the magic scale and my part in the revolution has not yet begun.