OLIO is a free app that connects neighbours and local shops, restaurants and cafés to share surplus food and household items.

OLIO connects neighbours and local shops, restaurants and cafés to share surplus food and household items to reduce waste and improve community spirit. Anyone can download OLIO’s free app and join the sharing community to give and receive items for free. When people have surplus food close to the sell-by date, homegrown vegetables to spare or groceries in their fridge before leaving for a trip, they can add a photo, description and pick-up information to the app. Others on the receiving end can then browse the close-by listings and set up a pick-up via private messaging.

The company has a network of dedicated “Food Waste Heroes” (volunteers) who collect unwanted food from local food outlets and redistribute it as well as taking enough for themselves. Since launching the service in London in 2015, OLIO has expanded to 32 countries, with 700,000 users and 20,000 volunteers, helping to save over one million portions of food from being wasted.

Roughly one third of the food produced worldwide for human consumption is wasted every year – In other words, approximately 1.3 billion tonnes of food ends up in the bin. OLIO seeks to minimise food waste – quickly and free of charge. Every week, the digital marketplace is used to save thousands of food items from the bin and over half of the food is requested within two hours.