We do everything we can to prevent food waste from happening throughout the supply chain, but our operations still produce some surplus food that can’t be sent out in Gousto boxes.
Luckily there’s a way of tackling this food surplus so it’s put to a good social and environmental use, and ends up being a positive rather than a negative.
We’re really proud to partner with FareShare, the UK’s largest charity fighting food waste and hunger. They redistribute our surplus food to local charities and community groups who turn it into nutritious meals for those most in need.
Thanks to FareShare…
- In 2021 alone, we donated 424,469 meals to 1,961 charities. These charities included clubs serving school children, people experiencing homelessness, community groups serving older people, charities serving people on low or no incomes and people with mental health conditions
- By donating this food, we’ve prevented 285 tonnes of CO2e from going to waste and saved 267 million litres of water
Here’s some official info from our team about our partnership with the gang at Fareshare:
FareShare is the UK’s largest charity fighting hunger and food waste. They work as a middle man - helping to redistribute surplus food from retailers to frontline local charities and community groups who turn the surplus food into nutritious meals, in order to feed those most in need. Gousto started working with FareShare in December 2020 to donate surplus food. We do this in two ways:
- We donate surplus food at our factories - surplus food is that is in good, edible condition, it just doesn’t meet our shelf life requirements (because we don’t send food to customers that has only a day or two left on it)
- We ‘save’ failed boxes that couriers haven’t been able to deliver (for example b/c the customer cancels after dispatch, or if flooding prevents delivery, etc.). This is a pioneering partnership we’ve been working on with DPD since Q2 this year
Methodology:
FareShare provides Gousto with monthly and annual reports, disclosing the number of Gousto meals donated to FareShare. We donate on average 35,000 meals a month, a figure taken from the total number of meals Gousto donated in 2021 (424,469) divided by 12 months across all our sites. This figure includes both surplus food from our factories, and ‘failed’ boxes that couriers haven’t been able to deliver.
Unit of analysis:
‘Number of meals donated’ is a metric that is calculated by FareShare, in line with WRAP's guidance on 'reporting on the amounts of food surplus redistributed (weight and meal equivalents). WRAP recommends the use of 420g as an ‘average’ meal size.
FareShare record the amount of edible food collected from Gousto in tonnes, and convert it into 'meals', using the WRAP methodology of 2381 meals per tonne (1000kg / 420g).
For more information or if you have any questions about the claim, please contact us here.