Online platform Get Wasted gives surplus veggies and fruit a second life
Yellowy limes, crooked carrots or large cabbages that are too big to fit five in a box? Even though these are perfectly edible, they now often end up in landfills. The online B2B marketplace Get Wasted from EIT Food (one of the winners of the Smart City project call 2021-2022) wants to change this. Get Wasted connects food producers such as farmers and wholesalers to social organisations such as schools and care homes, as well as to restaurants and caterers.
Food loss and food waste pose serious challenges throughout the food chain. In our current system, an estimated 30 to 40 percent of food goes to waste annually. Per European, this amounts to about 131 kilos of food per year. Get Wasted aims to help solve this problem with an innovative online marketplace for surplus food. On the platform, surplus food can easily be bought and sold. Thanks to this circular model, the waste of one actor becomes the raw material for another.
Not only does this allow for valuable food to be saved, Get Wasted also offers a financial boon to all parties involved. Farmers still receive a fair price for fruit and vegetables that would otherwise go to waste. At the same time, social organisations such as hospitals and schools, often constrained by tight budgets, have the opportunity to buy healthy produce at affordable rates.
players in the food chain, shaping a more circular food system. In Brussels, Get Wasted also partners with Brooddoosnodig. Brooddoosnodig helps schools that want to offer healthy meals to their pupils. Thanks to Brooddoosnodig's digital donation system, parents, neighbours, social organisations and local traders can easily treat a pupil with an empty lunch box to a meal. Where Brooddoosnodig links with Brussels schools, Get Wasted provides surplus veggies that can be transformed into healthy and tasty soups. Two digital ecosystems joining forces to combat food waste and fill lunch boxes with healthy goodies!
Are you in the food industry and do you want to help reduce food waste? Are you interested in buying or selling surplus food? Visit www.getwasted.eu for more information.
