Social entrepreneurs Aoibheann O’Brien and Iseult Ward were students at Trinity College Dublin in 2012 when they met. They shared a desire to stop food waste and FoodCloud was born.
Their technology platform – Foodiverse – directly connects food retailers with surplus food to local community groups. They also work closely with the Irish food industry to identify and rescue excess food from food manufacturers, producers, growers and distributors. The “food waste” is then redistributed to community groups from one of their three warehouses, or hubs, across Ireland.
There’s a very important reason to stop wasting food. When put into landfills, it releases methane, contributing to global warming. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest greenhouse gas-emitting country in the world, behind China and the United States, the United Nations said in a report.
FoodCloud is now working with Tesco in central Europe, including the Czech Republic and in Slovakia. It has partnerships with other supermarket chains including Aldi, Dunnes Stores, Lidl, Musgrave MarketPlace and Waitrose, and international food companies including Kellogg’s.
Their ethos:
“We asked ourselves and our stakeholders, what brings this all together? And it was kindness. It was kindness to people. And it was kindness to our planet. And we care about both.”
Wow! Imagine a world where everyone thought like this. 💚