Food waste fighting app partners with Aldi Süd and RIMI Baltic

Food waste is an ongoing and expensive issue for manufacturers, retailers and consumers. To help alleviate waste and the end of the supply chain, Aldi Süd and RIMI Baltic have partnered with Plant Jammer to install a widget on their websites that helps fight food waste.

Consumers using the grocers’ websites can use the widget to track and manage food waste in their own homes by entering the ingredients they currently have into the system and then customizing parameters to meet individual dietary restrictions. The widget will then provide the user with a customized recipe using those ingredients.

Plant Jammer hopes that its recipe generation technology will help expand consumers’ cooking flexibility and thereby reduce overall food waste. To reach more households, the company said it intends to launch widgets on 100 food company websites by the end of 2021 and 5,000 by 2023. Eventually, the startup is aiming to educate 1 billion people to cook and eat sustainably.

Food waste has substantial environmental and economic impacts. According to a March report from the United Nations between 8% and 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions are associated with unconsumed food. At scale – More than 930 million tons of food sold in 2019 landed in waste bins, according to the report – this adds up. In that same year, ReFed found the total financial cost of food waste to be about $218 billion.

Such a cost to both the environment and individual wallets has brought notice to this issue. However, Plant Jammer believes that more can be done to educate consumers on how to get creative with ingredients that may be leftover in their fridges and pantries. According to Plant Jammer surveys, and business intelligence from large food brands cited by the startup, such as Unilever and Nestlé, 80% of people actually cook less than 10 recipes per year. In Plant Jammer's study, the Baltic region was specifically called out as data showed that as many as 90% of people in the Baltic region throw away food because it becomes spoiled.

Still, altering the way that people cook and eat will be an uphill battle. The pandemic has forced many to learn or relearn cooking skills, but 25% are tired of having to cook more frequently of those cooking at home more frequently as a result of the pandemic are tired of doing so, according to a new report by sales and marketing agency Acosta. Nevertheless, a larger number (35%) have a newfound passion for cooking, which Plant Jammer is looking to capitalize on.

“We believe the best way to get there is not by regulation, taxes, or moral judgment, but by putting a powerful tool into people’s hands, that empowers them to do the right thing, without compromising on taste or convenience”, says Michael Haase, the CEO and Founder of Plant Jammer.