Giving Compass' Take:

• Food Tank highlights, Yonodesperdicio, the first web-mobile application in Spain for collaborative consumption to reduce household food waste.

• Yonodesperdicio is also trying to create awareness about waste in other sectors, including businesses and universities. How can donors help support food waste education? 

• Find out why we need to reduce food waste by 2030. 

In Spain, the mobile platform Yonodesperdicio—in English, “I do not waste”—is working to transform waste into opportunity through food sharing. The app was created in 2015 by Prosalus, a nonprofit organization based in Madrid, aiming to create a network to facilitate food donation or exchange.

Spain produces over 8 million tons of food waste every year. In June 2019, the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food published a report showing an 8.9 percent increase in food waste from 2017 to 2018 in Spanish households. Yonodesperdicio is the first web-mobile application of its kind in Spain, and it seeks to create a network to facilitate food donation and exchange, and ultimately reduce waste.

Laura Martos, Awareness Officer, and Teresa De Febrer, volunteer at Prosalus, tell Food Tank that lack of awareness among consumers is the main challenge in the fight against food waste: “citizens are not aware of the environmental, economic and social impact that food waste generates. Raising awareness of this issue will contribute to responsible and conscious decisions.” Yonodesperdicio is also investing in school projects to raise awareness among children. “To achieve commitment to sustainability, we are convinced that action with children and young people is essential and cannot be postponed,” Martos tells Food Tank.

Read the full article on Yonodesperdicio by Sarah Costa at Food Tank.