Food sharing in our country and the world: how to solve the problem of food losses

How to use foreign experience in food distribution and start-ups to solve the problem of food loss and waste in our country

About 17 million tons of food waste is generated in our country every year. If we add the losses generated in the supply chain, including agricultural production, processing, logistics and storage, the total loss is 42 million tons per year. Foodsharing can solve this problem.

Foodsharing is the distribution of food with a suitable shelf life to those who are interested in them – the needy, eco-activists and those who are firmly on the path of responsible consumption. Several types of food sharing services operate in our country.

• food bank

An example is the Rus food fund, which distributes large amounts of food to charities across the country. About 20 different NGOs in 57 regions of our country cooperate with the fund.

• Volunteer projects

The foodsharing.ru project brought together activists with the idea of ​​saving food and preventing food waste. Volunteers pick up food in cafes, canteens and shops that cooperate with the foosdsharing.ru service and distribute it among those interested. There are about 50 thousand people in the project community.

• Mobile Apps

Mobile applications sell food from cafes and restaurants with a 50-80% discount. Among the most popular in Moscow and St. Petersburg are EatMe, LastBox, DoggyBag and others.

• Regional groups in social networks

Such groups exist mainly on VKontakte, where ordinary users share their leftover food with each other. Perhaps the most numerous of these groups is the St. Petersburg-based “I’ll give food for free”, which unites more than 69 thousand users. Also, relatively large groups (more than a thousand participants) exist in Petrozavodsk, Naberezhnye Chelny and Arkhangelsk.

Despite such diversity, all food-sharing services operating in our country today save only 7 thousand tons of food. Compare this volume with 17 million tons of losses in retail and households: this is less than half a percent. 17 million tons of food is the equivalent of the annual diet of 30 million adults. This is more than the official number of our countries living below the poverty line (about 20 million people).

How can food sharing be maximized and help address hunger and rising food waste?

Foodsharing in the world

• Development of commercial services aimed at the middle class.

Japan’s Tabete, for example, which offers discounted food at more than 600 bars, restaurants and bakeries in Tokyo, experienced a real boom in popularity during the quarantine, when the volume of the offer more than doubled from February to March. The application allowed users to support their favorite establishments, and businesses to compensate for losses from the lack of tourists in Tokyo and the closure of trading floors, which is extremely important for our country during a new wave of coronavirus restrictions.

• Cooperation with large stores and supermarkets

After merging with the lebensmittelretten.de service, the German foodsharing.de platform now has the ability to share food with other people and collaborate with shops and supermarkets. Since then, the supply has grown dramatically and the number of users of the service has more than quadrupled.

• Creation of a convenient mobile application with rich functionality

For example, the Olio service from the UK allows you to place and search for ads not only with food, but also with other, including hand made, goods. With a user-friendly app, an entire ecosystem, and partnerships with many local producers, Olio has become the most popular food-sharing service in the US and UK.

How to save more food?

Now in our country there is no online platform that would conquer the market, as Olio once did in Europe with 2.3 million users. Such a platform would make food with an appropriate shelf life available to millions of users. Such a sharing model is based in principle on the scale of the community: after all, it is its members that generate both demand and supply. No participants – no sharing.

Another important limitation is the peculiarities of Russian state regulation. For example, today it is cheaper for companies in our country to dispose of products than to give them to charity. With a free transfer, the tax burden (VAT and income tax) can be up to 40% of the value of the goods. Not many businessmen are willing to pay extra 40% in taxes for their good deeds. In June, the problem was partially solved – a law was passed exempting food products donated to charity from income tax in the amount of no more than 1% of the company’s revenue. Charitable organizations are looking forward to the same decision in terms of VAT.

There are also difficulties with sanitary and epidemiological requirements, which, for example, prohibit the sale of fruits and vegetables with broken peel integrity. At the same time, such products can be quite edible. And even if they cannot be sold at a reduced price, it would be wise to leave the possibility of giving them to those in need. The most important thing is not even the existing barriers in the legislation, but the lack of incentives to prevent the formation of food waste.

How does food sharing govern legislation in other countries?

• In France, there is a legal ban on the disposal of usable food, and in Oregon, the United States, it is forbidden to discard any food waste. Such initiatives act more as a means of motivating, rather than intimidating, citizens and businesses to participate in food sharing and other environmental projects, since in reality it is impossible to check the waste of each household and business.
• The Spanish non-profit organization Prosalus, which developed the Yonodesperdicio food sharing service, among other things, publishes educational materials, conducts lectures, master classes and webinars on waste recycling, with a special focus on education in schools and universities with state support.
• The Government of Canada provides broad support for food sharing through an association of food banks, charities and non-profit organizations involved in food sharing and food loss prevention. This year, the total amount of donations from corporate sponsors, individuals and the state has already exceeded $74 million, of which more than a third comes from government support, compared with $65 million in 2019.

What else is missing in our country for the development of foodsharing?

Finally, another difficulty in the development of foodsharing that we observe in our country is low involvement of food manufacturers, retail chains, cafes and restaurants in the prevention of food losses and waste. Some representatives of large businesses, including Nestle, Mars, PepsiCo, X5 Retail Group, Magnit, donate food to charity even in the face of an additional tax burden. But their units and their total contribution are less than half a percent of the existing annual losses.

Encourage big business to work in this direction the development of non-financial reporting practices would help and even the introduction of mandatory non-financial reporting for companies with a turnover of 10 billion rubles, including those operating in the consumer sector. Such a bill has already been prepared by the Ministry of Economic Development. Minimizing food losses is directly related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals – the elimination of hunger, the development of responsible consumption and production, and the fight against climate change. Therefore, work in this direction is fundamentally important for all companies that publicly declare their commitment to sustainable development.

It should be noted that the crisis caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic has further exposed the problem of food losses. Disruptions in supply chains caused by quarantine restrictions, panic buying in stores, catering shutdowns have all created a wave of food losses and waste. At the same time, the work of many food-sharing services, both commercial and non-commercial, was hindered or completely blocked. So, the supply fell by 45%, although the demand for their services increased by 15% (according to the results of a survey that we conducted in April 2020).

What place can and should food sharing take in the life of a modern person and a modern city? It is a tool for solving social and environmental problems without creating additional budgetary costs. Take a look at carsharing in Moscow: the authorities of the capital once realized the benefits of car sharing. One car can be used by 8-10 motorists every day, which is much more efficient than personal cars parked outside the house or office most of the day. Food sharing can become a social safety net by distributing food to those in need, and an environmental policy measure by ridding landfills of a third of household waste.

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