A few months ago, while I was in line for a drink at the Flickerfest bar, a stranger turned to my friend and asked him: “Have you heard of Too Good To Go?” He responded: “Have you tried kiwi berries?!” But she had a point, and clearly wanted to spread the word about an app that’s saving Sydneysiders heaps of money on their groceries and diverting a whole lot of food away from landfill.
Founded in Copenhagen back in 2015, Too Good To Go is the world’s largest marketplace for surplus food, offering customers “Surprise Bags” from their local shops, cafés, bakeries and restaurants from as little as $6.99. Now alive and kicking in Sydney, the sustainability-focused app has partnered with more than 500 businesses across Sydney to offer Sydneysiders cut-price food (and save businesses the hassle, cost and environmental labour of binning food).
Since November last year, the app has diverted more than 175,000 meals away from landfill in NSW alone. That means Too Good To Go’s NSW-based users have prevented more than 472,500 tonnes of CO₂ from entering Earth's atmosphere and saved 490,000 square metres of landfill.
So how does it work? Sign up for free, and you’ll be able to browse the online marketplace of nearby cafés, grocery stores and restaurants, who will give a brief description of what you’ll find in your "Surprise Bag” and outline their available pick-up times for that day and the following. Reserve your bag (they range in price between $6.99–$15 and from my experience, contain food to the value of around $60 on average, saving Sydneysiders around $30-50 per haul), and swing by the store at the allotted time to collect your bag of goodies. Businesses featured on the app range from bakeries to sushi spots to grocery stores, with top picks including Harris Farm, Bake Bar, Avner’s and Omeio. The catch is, the food you’ll get is fresh food that’s about to expire – so you’ll need to use it (or freeze it) pretty quickly.
Keen? You can sign up over here.
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