Too Good to Go

Recycle Pay encourages residents of Uganda to collect plastic waste by awarding them points that can be redeemed for cash, healthcare credits, or school fees. The whole process is organized on an app.

At a 10,000-square-foot warehouse in Bell, California, Food Forward employees race to take in and redistribute 265,000 pounds of fresh produce every day. The organization receives excess fresh fruits and vegetables from wholesale businesses for free and delivers them to 300 nonprofits working to address food insecurity.

The California-based tech startup Shinkei is combining artificial intelligence with an ancient Japanese method called Ike Jime to kill fish quickly with less pain. Alongside improved fish welfare, the method cuts down waste by keeping the fish fresher for longer.

To reduce landfill use and greenhouse gas emissions while feeding those in need, New York’s food donation program requires big businesses to donate edible food to places like food banks instead of throwing it out.

New York City’s new curbside composting program collects food waste from residents in Queens to divert it from landfills. Microorganisms break down the food scraps in a process called anaerobic digestion that creates biogas used to heat 2,500 homes.

Too Good To Go offers a digital platform where food businesses can offer food approaching its expiration date at a third of its original cost. Too Good To Go helps supermarkets recover costs, connects people with cheap food and reduces food waste. Since launching in 2016, the program has saved more than 11 million meals in Denmark alone and the company has now expanded across 17 countries in Europe and North America.

As inflation rates skyrocket, apps like Canada-based FlashFood are proving users the option of purchasing surplus food at discounted rates from nearby grocery stores and restaurants. It has helped consumers reduce their grocery bills, sometimes by half, while keeping almost 45 million pounds of food waste away from landfills since 2016.

Spurred by federal and state incentives, farmers in Massachusetts are adopting agrivoltaics, the practice of installing a solar array on the same land they use for crops and livestock.

Kenya-based Project Mila collects food waste from households and businesses in Mombasa and feeds it to black soldier fly larvae. Then, the larvae are harvested for livestock feed and their excrement is used to create a sustainable fertilizer.

The Pakam initiative is taking care of waste mismanagement in Lagos with a digital marketplace for waste and recyclable materials. The app pays households for their recyclables and connects those generating waste with those who collect it to ensure it’s properly disposed of.