When I first moved out of home I couldn’t believe the price of food! My parents had always paid for the groceries so I got a real shock when I had to start buying them myself, I clearly remember saying to one of my housemates, “woah, chicken is expensive!” There were no free apps like OLIO around back then (that I knew of anyway) which allows local people and businesses to share surplus food, not only to help save money but also the environment.

OLIO is really simple to use. If you have anything that you’re not going to be able to eat like food nearing its sell-by date, spare home-grown vegetables or maybe you’re off on your hols and you’ve got leftover groceries that won’t last until you get back, you can add a photo and a description along with when and where the item is available to collect.

Similarly, if you’re having to tighten the purse strings and are looking for something tasty to eat without it costing the Earth, just browse through the listings until you see something that takes your fancy and arrange a suitable pick-up time via private messaging.

Josephine Liang, who is 25 and lives in London, decided she wanted to save money to travel and stopped spending £20 to £30 a week on food by utilising OLIO. She managed to reduce her weekly food bill to just £5 and ended up volunteering for the app to help businesses like Pret A Manger redistribute untouched food once a week. Find out more.

Shockingly, over a third of all food produced globally goes to waste and all the world’s hungry people (nearly one billion) could be fed on less than a quarter of the food that is wasted in the US, UK and Europe. OLIO encourages us to take responsibility for this and urges us to be part of the solution, not the problem. I for one am going to join the 300,000 other people & give it a go, will you?

FPL Laura x