FAMILIES waste £720 a year on average on unused food but there are apps to ensure your grocery shop doesn’t end up in the bin.
Food charity the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) warns that around a third of the food we produce worldwide is lost or wasted, which is bad for the environment and our wallets.
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Supermarkets and restaurants often throw away unsold fresh food at the end of the day and many households could have items stuck at the back of a cupboard or in the fridge that they have forgotten about.
Throwing away unused food just because you don’t want it or it is close to its expiry date is bad for the environment and also a waste of your money.
But there are plenty of apps that can cut food waste, reduce your shopping bill and help others.
Kitche
Kitche keeps tracked of the food you purchased from your supermarket shop and will suggest recipes and warn you when items are getting close to their sell by date.
It promises to save households as much as £630 a year by ensuring their food is put to good use and doesn’t end up getting thrown away.
You can download the free app on an iPhone or Android smartphone.
How to get cashback every time you shop
NOT using a cashback site or app means you are missing out every time you shop. Here are full-time bargain hunter Collette Jones’ best tips.
- Check out welcome offers: Cashback sites have amazing freebies for new customers, such as a takeaway from Just Eat or a Benefit beauty product
- Look for cashback on everything: You can claim on things such as MOTs, insurance, train tickets and holidays
- Save money at the supermarket: It’s a good idea to download apps Shopmium, Check-outSmart, Quidco ClickSnap, GreenJinn and TopCashback’s Snap and Save. Check out what is available, pick it up in-store and upload a photo of the receipt to get your cashback
- Combine cashback offers with promotions: Double savings and maximise cashback by matching third-party offers from cashback sites with in-store and online promotions. You can’t always use discount codes with cashback, but you can take advantage of sales and offers such as free gifts
- Download cashback notifiers: The website Honey has a great notifier. It sits in your browser, pops up when you click on a website that offers cashback and searches voucher codes
It scans your supermarket receipt and lists your items in the app so you can always check how much food you have.
You can set reminders for when items such as milk or bread go past their sell by date and record what you have thrown away so you can work out how much money you have wasted.
The app also has thousands of recipe suggestions that you can filter based on the products you have at home.
No Waste
The free No Waste app lets you scan your food and organise it by expiry date, name or category.
This makes it easier to do the next shop as you can easily see what you are running out of.
Lists can be shared with family so you can give away unwanted food plus you can track how much you are wasting by deleting items you have eaten or that have expired.
The app will tell you how much of your food you have eaten each month and how much money you have saved or wasted.
Olio
Are you going on a diet or did you over order items in your latest shop? You can share unwanted food for free among your neighbours using Olio.
Food shared could be nearing its sell-by date, spare home-grown vegetables or the groceries in your fridge when you go away, move home or are on a diet.
You can also share non-food items such as furniture, clothes, toys, household and beauty products.
Users take a picture of the item, post it to the app and then agree where and how it should be picked up with anyone interested.
The app is free for households but businesses have to pay for a service that will take unsold food and distribute it to them.
Almost 10 million portions of food have been shared through the app, which has 2.6 million users worldwide.
Too Good To Go
Don’t let local cafes, restaurants, shops and supermarkets throw away unsold food at the end of each day.
Many restaurant, café and food brands have partnered with Too Good to Go and will provide a “magic bag” of unsold food to users at the end of the working day.
Download and set your location on the Too Good To Go app and you can choose from nearby stores listing their unsold food at a reduced price.
Listings show how much a bag of food costs and how many are left as well as where you need to pick it up.
The items in the bag are always different as it depends on what hasn’t sold so there is no guarantee that you will like what you get.
But there are plenty of tasty brands to try such as Greggs, Morrisons, Pret, and Costa.
Karma
Similar to Too Good To Go, Karma lets hungry households rescue unsold meals from businesses at a discount.
You can search for nearby food to pickup based on your location through the Karma app.
Unlike Too Good to Go, it well tell you what food you are getting so there is even less chance of it being wasted.
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We’ve also rounded up some of the best budgeting apps to help you save money.
A couple of years ago, another new app claimed it could help you save up to £600 by ditching unnecessary fees and subscriptions.
See our pick of the best money management apps.
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