Services company Sodexo will purchase 100 tonnes of surplus food every year for the next three years from social enterprise Yume.
Sodexo was the first corporate buyer to take the Yume pledge, and has worked closely with the enterprise since their partnership began in 2018 with the purchase of almost 10,000 kilograms of excess food items.
The partnership continued into 2019, when Sodexo purchased another 50 tonnes of surplus food and saved approximately 3.4 million litres of water and 100,000 kilograms of CO2 emissions.
Since then, the company has purchased more than 190 tonnes of food from Yume. In the past month, Sodexo and Yume prevented 32,000 red velvet cakes and 12,200 bowls of soup from going to waste.
Sodexo Australia CEO energy & resources APAC & country president Darren Hedley said: “For the past four years we have partnered with Yume to make an impact on the food wastage culture in Australia. Operating across more than 300 sites in Australia, we recognise our responsibility to give our consumers the highest quality food through the most socially – and environmentally – conscious approach.”
Yume founder and CEO Katy Barfield said the country needs more companies to join the fight against food waste.
“The Australian commercial food sector is responsible for 42 per cent of the food that goes to waste – this is equal to 3.2 million tonnes of food each year,” said Barfield.
Yume has been at the forefront of food waste prevention. It recently developed an Australian-first technology in collaboration with the Victorian Government, Unilever, Mars Food, and General Mills, to develop a one-stop solution for producers to sell or donate surplus food on its platform.
Yume said it has saved around 622 million litres of water and cut more than 10 million kilograms of CO2 emissions since 2016.
