This app lets you buy super-cheap meals AND fight food waste

We’ve written before about the various valiant attempts to fight London’s high levels of food waste, like Olio, FoodCycle and the new community fridge network. Now here’s another way to help cut down the amount of perfectly good food that London throws away – and pick up some top takeaway food for next to nothing.

Founded by a group of friends in Denmark in 2015, Too Good to Go is an app that allows restaurants to sell on their unused food to hungry diners. They’ve sold 1 million meals so far – which would otherwise have been chucked away – for as little as £2 each. Everyone wins here: Londoners get good food for small change, the planet gets a break from emissions that result from wasting food, and restaurants make a bit of cash from leftovers. You can also ‘pay it forward’, providing meals to those in need in association with various food poverty charities.

To get going, download the Too Good to Go app, sign up and place your order at a local restaurant (there are participants all over London, both chains and independents). Then just pick it up at a set time before closing, and feel virtuous and full. Waste not, want not!

Got a bright idea to make London better? Tell us about it, and we might give you £5,000 to make it happen.