Circular Economy

Too Good to Go Releases First Impact Report, Commits to Climate Positivity

The world’s leading anti-food-waste app releases first Impact Report and commits to going beyond its carbon-neutral achievement to continue to fight climate change.

Published 3 years ago | About a 4 minute read

Image: Too Good to Go

Today, Too Good to Go — the tech-for-good company behind the world's #1 app for fighting food waste — released its first-ever impact report and announced its commitment to being “carbon neutral+” — essentially, extracting more carbon from the atmosphere than it produces (aka carbon negative, net positive or climate positive) from 2020 onwards. The report highlights the startup’s key environmental and social impact efforts, activities and progress over the past year globally.

Too Good to Go connects consumers to surplus food from local restaurants and grocery stores that would otherwise be thrown away. The company asserts that each meal rescued is equivalent to the carbon footprint from charging one smartphone fully 422 times. The company has only operated Stateside since September 2020, when it brought its popular food-waste solution over from Europe to inspire US consumers to join in on the movement. In just 4 short months, 145,000+ users across New York City and Boston, the app's first two US markets, joined in to save over 44,000 meals from the trash — the carbon equivalent of charging a smartphone fully over 19.4 million times. In 2021, that number has quickly grown to over a million US users and over 575,000 meals in under a year — the carbon equivalent of nearly 300 flights around the world.

To-date, the B Corp-certified company has launched its food-waste solution into 10 major US cities — NYC, Boston, Jersey City, Washington, DC; Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Chicago and Austin, with plans to be in many of the largest US cities by the end of 2021 — and rallied 4,500+ food businesses nationwide to do their part to help rein in the country’s food waste.

"We're really proud of what we've accomplished in the US in such a short time, and it wouldn't have been possible without our incredible partners and users who were ready to join the fight against food waste," says Too Good to Go co-founder Lucie Basch. "Out of all the countries we've expanded into, the speed in response and excitement from Americans has been unmatched. We can't wait for what's to come in 2021 as we continue expanding and bringing our food waste solution to more parts of the country."

Globally, food waste represents 8 percent of greenhouse gases. One-third of all food produced is wasted around the world, and that amount goes up to 30-40 percent in the US. Project Drawdown’s 2020 Review cited food-waste reduction as the #1 solution in a list of 80+ existing solutions for combating climate change.

Our feeds are buzzing with the work of innovators working to solve our global food-waste issue — recent examples include everything from packaging innovations to turning agricultural waste streams into textiles, clean energy and upcycled food products. For its part, Too Good to Go saved over 28 million meals from the trash last year, a 49 percent increase from 2019. In that same time, over 50,000 food businesses around the world joined forces with the app to prevent food waste.

"Raising the bar is one of Too Good to Go's core values, and this is what we want to achieve in publishing our Impact Report and commitment to being carbon neutral+," says CEO Mette Lykke. “It's a tangible assessment of the positive impact we're having on the world around us — and also our way of thanking and paying tribute to our communities of users, partners and stakeholders for their commitment to fighting food waste, together.”

The impact report highlights Too Good to Go's key environmental and social impact in 2020; and the many citizens, partners, business, governments and NGOs that helped achieve these goals.

Among 2020’s highlights:

50,000+ partners joined Too Good to Go worldwide, 4,000+ now in the US
The "Look, Smell, Taste, Don't Waste" campaign, which aims to demystify date labeling, was successfully launched across markets
The "Cities Against Food Waste" project was launched to help city councils to work within their communities against food waste
Too Good to Go helped hundreds of wholesalers and manufacturers hit by the pandemic save food

In 2021, Too Good to Go aims to save 65 million meals and will continue its global expansion, to continue having as much impact as possible towards the time-critical mission of fighting food waste. The company, which has achieved carbon neutrality by offsetting all emissions related to its operations and value chain through offsetting and reforestation projects — not to mention the emissions avoided through the diversion of billions of tons of food — aims to achieve climate positivity.