Holland & Barrett partners with Olio to tackle food waste and help feed local communities
Health and wellness retailer Holland & Barrett has partnered with Olio, a food sharing app.
This supports Holland and Barrett to quickly and safely redistribute spare, good to eat food, including surplus from its new range of “food that loves you back” to people living nearby, lending a helping hand to local families who might be struggling and facing bare cupboards.
Olio makes this possible by pairing each Holland and Barrett store with one of its 90,000 food safety trained volunteers, many of whom will live just around the corner from the retailer’s stores.
Those volunteers visit stores at the end of each day and collect any spare food that’s nearing its use by date (but still perfectly edible). They take that food home, snap a picture of it and add it to Olio’s app, so that people nearby can request and collect it.
Also collected from Holland and Barrett through the scheme are ambient food products, including nuts and fruit, drinks and sports bars and powders.
As well as supporting local communities, saving food from the bin each day through Olio will positively impact the environmental footprint of Holland and Barrett’s stores. For each 1kg of food that ends up in landfill, 4.3128kg of CO2 is released into the atmosphere.
Saasha Celestial-One, COO and Co-Founder at Olio, says: “We’re delighted that a respected brand in the health and wellness sector like Holland and Barrett has made such a powerful commitment to fighting food waste and feeding communities.”
“We know our app users across the UK will be delighted to see their healthy and nutritious food coming onto the platform. This move from Holland and Barrett takes us one step closer to a food waste free retail sector in the UK - here’s hoping many more retailers will follow suit.
Anthony Houghton, Chief Operating Officer at Holland and Barrett, says: “We’re dedicated to creating a healthier and more sustainable world, and this partnership is a significant step towards that.”
“Our new chilled food offering has been incredibly popular with our customers already, and we’re very pleased to share surplus stock with Olio to make sure that it’s reaching those who are most in need.”
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