FoodCloud-uses-technology-to-get-surplus-food-to-nonprofits-more-efficiently

Taste of success: FoodCloud uses technology to get surplus food to nonprofits more efficiently

At 89, Margaret Cappock still bicycles around her Dublin neighborhood. Her apartment is filled with the furniture her husband built, part of the family business she managed for 50 years. She may be retired, but she is not complacent. Like many, she’s concerned about the impacts of climate change on her three children and six grandchildren.

“I’m very much aware,” she says. As part of doing her part, every week Cappock makes batches of orange juice using donated surplus fruit that otherwise could end up in a landfill – the worst possible place for it.

When surplus food is thrown away, it’s not just a missed opportunity to feed someone at a time when food prices are generally rising and food insecurity is expected to increase worldwide. Food put into landfills releases methane, a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere and contributes to global warming. If food waste were a country, it would be the third largest greenhouse gas-emitting country in the world, behind China and the United States, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations said in a report.

The staggering consequences of food waste appalled Aoibheann O’Brien and Iseult Ward. The two are co-founders of FoodCloud, which offers two services to redistribute surplus food: technology and warehousing. Their technology platform – Foodiverse – directly connects food retailers with surplus or excess food to local community groups. They also work closely with the Irish food industry to identify and rescue surplus food from food manufacturers, producers, growers and distributors and redistribute it to community groups from one of their three food redistribution warehouses, or hubs, across Ireland.

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