We all know that maintaining healthy food habits and 5-a-day routines is easier said than done. Even those who have the money for a healthy diet end up wasting a large percentage of the food they buy, and some food doesn’t even make it to consumers, amounting to a collective total of 9.5 million tonnes of food waste in a single year in the UK.
Food waste is increasingly becoming a social issue, as 8.4 million people in the UK are currently in food poverty. Unfortunately, when it comes to cutting back on food costs, healthy foods are the first to go, with 60% of food-insecure households cutting back on fruit and 44% on vegetables.
On the climate and environmental front, food waste accounts for up to 10% of all global carbon emissions (more than four times the amount of CO2e emissions produced by the world’s aviation industry). As food waste breaks down, it releases methane gas. This gas is 25 times more harmful than carbon dioxide, as it can trap heat within the atmosphere, damaging the ozone layer and compounding the climate crisis at an alarming rate.
Creative problem solving
We’re already seeing plans to align food systems with climate targets, including at COP28 last year, which saw the UK join over 150 countries in signing a landmark declaration. Food redistribution charities like FareShare are also doing their bit to rebalance the narrative, with 91% of the food they distributed in 2022 being surplus that would otherwise have gone to waste.
Still, you’ll wonder what this has to do with the creative industries. Creativity and design go way beyond making something beautiful; problem-solving is ingrained in the nature of designers, who have a huge part to play in driving the world towards a greener, more socially balanced future.
Brand and digital design studio Driftime rose to the challenge on this particular issue and designed the GRO-OP concept, a digital platform that connects local growers and grazers. Through GRO-OP, people growing the produce can offer their extra potatoes, peas, pears and more to people looking for fresh produce at an affordable price.
Instead of going to the compost heap, surplus food is redistributed to those who need it, benefiting both people and the planet.
GRO-OP was born from Driftime’s Hackathon, a collaborative and intensive experiment that tests what the team can achieve with creativity in an all-hands four-day sprint. “We worked hard to build a digital solution to a real-world problem that has sturdy legs and a viable business model, resulting in GRO-OP, your go-to community cooperative”, says Driftime CCO and co-founder Abb-d Taiyo.
Transparency and usability
While apps exist to help restaurants sell surplus food at a lower price, along with apps that help users manage their allotments, there aren’t any products that help allotment owners sell their produce, according to the studio. Taiyo explains how combatting food waste can come in many forms,