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Biffa and Olio announce surplus food collection partnership

Biffa and food sharing app Olio have partnered to introduce same-day local food distribution to deal with surplus food.  

The partnership will allow any edible surplus food remaining at the end of the day to be shared with the community when stores, sites or restaurants close. 

Employees will be required to set aside the surplus food for Olio volunteers (called Food Waste Heroes) to collect. Volunteers then take the food home, and upload it to Olio’s app, so people nearby can request and collect it. Usually, food finds a new home in as little as 30 minutes. Biffa Olio Logos

The volunteers all undertake thorough food safety training as part of their onboarding in the app, meaning Biffa clients can donate any food type – including cooked, chilled and frozen food – as well as ambient grocery products. 

Businesses are able to track the impact of their Olio food donations via Olio’s Partner Hub – including how many meals they’ve rescued, how much water they’ve saved and the emissions avoided through the food they’ve redistributed.

Amy Hooper Biffa
Amy Hooper, innovations manager at Biffa

Amy Hooper, innovations manager at Biffa, said: “We’re constantly looking for innovative ways to prevent surplus food from becoming waste in the first place in our mission to enable the UK’s circular economy by reducing waste. 

“It’s been an absolute pleasure working with Olio, and we are so excited to be launching this partnership. By joining forces, our unique collaboration enables us to move more food up the waste hierarchy than ever before, helping our customers hit their sustainability goals while saving them money by reducing food waste.   

“What sets this initiative apart is that businesses can tackle same-day food surplus, track the positive impact of their contribution, and access end-to-end food surplus and waste management solutions all in one place. Along with Company Shop Group as part of the wider Biffa group, customers will have access to a great range of options to manage their food waste and surplus sustainably with tangible social impact tracking.” 

Saasha Celestial-One Olio
Saasha Celestial-One, co-founder and COO of Olio

Saasha Celestial-One, co-founder and COO of Olio, added:“We’re so proud to announce our new partnership with Biffa, which is the first of its kind in the commercial waste management sector. Together, we’re able to reduce the weight of good, edible food ending up in Biffa bins, and make sure it feeds local families instead. 

“Olio and Biffa are 100% aligned on our mission to build a future without waste, and we’ve been really encouraged to see the results from our trials across Caffè Nero, Nando’s and Nisa locations over the past 12 months. We’re incredibly grateful to the whole team at Biffa, store staff at our trial locations, and Olio’s volunteers for getting our partnership off to such a flying start.” 

Trialling the redistribution of surplus food  

An initial trial of the partnership was run across 25 sites at Nando’s, Caffè Nero and Nisa. 

Running across 2023 and 2024, it saw 54kg of food rescued, equating to 7,197 meals for local people, saving 2,258 litres of water and preventing 3,739kg in carbon emissions. 

A Nisa store manager commented:“We are loving Olio. The volunteers are brilliant, the food is going out to the local community and it’s making me so proud to be able to help others. I definitely want to continue once the pilot is over.”  

Tim Norton, trials manager at Nisa, added: “Cutting food waste is a big priority issue to overcome for independent retailers so it is pleasing to see that the initial trial period with Biffa and Olio has been a success. We look forward to working with them heading into 2025 to bring continued benefits for our independent retailers.” 

In 2021, Biffa acquired the Company Shop Group which supports over 800 businesses in redistributing surplus products and turn imperfect products with incorrectly labelled or damaged packaging into sellable products, to be sent to one of its ‘surplus supermarkets’. 

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