As time ticked on within the walls of Baker’s Delight I was only thinking of one thing, what time is appropriate to throw out all this bread? The time being as it was, 5:30, and the doors would be shut by 6. I would then have half an hour, in order to clean the whole shop, by myself, before they stopped paying me. The irony of the food wastage being seen as a waste of company time was not lost on me.
During my time at Baker’s Delight, I single-handedly threw out up to 12 bags full of bread every second shift, I worked there for a year. The plastic rubbish bags I used would often break under the weight of all the baked goods stuffed inside. I have a scar on my knee from a rather difficult loaf of sourdough that broke through a bag and scrapped across me.
Food wastage in Australia is a major issue. According to The Australian Government Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, Australians waste 7.6 million tons of food each year. To individualise that it equals 312kg per person, that’s about the same size as a fully grown brown bear. Places like Baker’s Delight, while claiming they have an action plan for food wastage, many people, myself included, know firsthand that this is not the case. Large rubbish bins full of bread end up in landfills across Australia because companies are refusing to give away food at the end of the night. But organisations like Too Good To Go are trying to change that.
Too Good To Go is a company founded in Denmark by Thomas Bjørn Momen, Stian M. H. Olesen and Klaus Bagge Pedersen in 2016. The app launched in Melbourne in August of last year shortly followed by Sydney in November and finally Perth as of April last year. The app allows users to get a surprise bag of left-over food from many of their favourite café, bakery or even some grocery. Too Good To Go was created with to help ease the amount of food wastage in Denmark and is now reaching out worldwide
Too Good To Go is making food waste something people can bargain with. This app allows people to get bags of food at huge discounts, allowing both the customer and the company to walk away with a win.
When the app launched in Australia last year, in Melbourne and Sydney, it garnered more than 140,000 sign-ups, and with Perth joining the ranks this number is likely to double. Many young Australians are finding out about Too Good To Go via Tik Tok videos. Made by various different creators, these videos often show the collection of the bags, how much they cost and an unboxing of what’s inside. “I’ve seen lots of American people posting about it,” says Elisha Parkin, a frequent user of the app, “and recently I saw some people in Australia use it […] so I searched it up and it’s great, like it will find any of the like local places in your area”
The app also allows people to get a large amount of food at an extremely discounted rate, Parkin goes on to say “I’m not spending ten dollars on a loaf of bread in this economy like it’s just not reasonable but if I can spend 10 dollar and get a whole lot of food and share it with my friends and family […] without it costing a fortune, of course, I’m gonna get it” Within Australia’s current climate, being able to get a whole meal is more than just a silver lining.
Last month, Oz Harvest released its yearly community needs survey info graph. This shows that in the last year, 77% of charities have felt an increasing influx of people. 50,000 people are unable to buy themselves food each month, which is a 54% increase since their last survey in 2024. These results paint a picture of a part of Australia that is unable to support itself and a part that is simply spending far too much money on food that could eventually make its way to a landfill.
Oz Harvest is Australia’s leading food rescue organisation. Their mission is to recuse as much food as possible and use it to feed people in need. They believe that by saving as much food as possible, they will be able to help both the plant and the people who inhabit it. Oz Harvest is one of those companies that even if you haven’t heard of them, you’ve heard of them. Their ad campaign is pasted over every station, from buses to trains and even the light rain. Splashed with the iconic yellow, Oz Harvest has done one thing for sure: made themselves heard.
On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays the iconic yellow truck would show up at the front door of Baker’s Delight and out pop two middle-aged men, who would pack up the remaining bread, there always being a large amount of that, and whilst it away before it would face the same grim fate of the rubbish bins that so many other do.
During the other days of the week a man, whose name I regrettably can no longer remember, would call the shop about a half hour before we closed. He would ask if we had charity coming that night and when I said no, he would proceed to ask if it was okay if I left a bag of bread outside of the bins so he could take some to the duck pond. One of my coworkers had found him dumpster diving and since then had come up with a compromise. Companies like Too Good To Go help prevent having such an excess of food that there would be a need to make deals with dumpster divers. This company allows Australian families to gain large amounts of food for low prices while also taking some of the load off the planet we inhabit.
Be the first to comment