Future Food with Analisa Winther - Too Good To Go's Mikkel Fog Holm-Nielsen on fighting food waste through business, households, politics, and education

Too Good To Go's Mikkel Fog Holm-Nielsen on fighting food waste through business, households, politics, and education

11/26/19 • 32 min

Too Good To Go enables consumers to buy food that would otherwise be thrown out at the end of the day. The idea started in Denmark and has quickly spread across Europe with everyone from mom and pop bakeries to big grocery retailers getting on board. Today they've saved some 25.5 million meals and opened up a new customer segment for many food businesses.

In this episode, we speak with Mikkel Fog Holm-Nielsen who runs special projects for Too Good To Go's management team. Join us as we discuss their ambitious strategy to fight food waste across multiple fronts. By 2020, they aim to work with 75,000 businesses, inspire 50 million people to reduce their household food waste, impact regulation in 5 countries, and have a food waste curriculum in 500 schools.

2:00 How Too Good To Go got started
5:40 Creating a business around food waste
14:10 Vision for the future food system and what's missing to get there
17:20 How they are fighting food waste via business, politics, education, and household behavior
27:30 Company culture and why much of the team from Endomondo, which sold to Under Armour for $85 million, joined Too Good To Go

2:00 How Too Good To Go got started
5:40 Creating a business around food waste
14:10 Vision for the future food system and what's missing to get there
17:20 How they are fighting food waste via business, politics, education, and household behavior
27:30 Company culture and why much of the team from Endomondo, which sold to Under Armour for $85 million, joined Too Good To Go

Previous Episode

Arla Digital's Tomi Sirén on using tech to drive FMCG's sustainability agenda forward

Arla is the 5th largest dairy company in the world. Owned by 12,500 farmers across seven countries, they have an ambition to become the most transparent value chain in dairy.

In today's episode, we discuss this ambition with Tomi Sirén who is the head of Digital and Technological Innovations at Arla. Based in Finalnd, he’s spearheading a variety of projects focused on moving their sustainability agenda forward with emerging technologies including the Arla Milkchain. Listen in as we talk about:

5:30 Arla's digital transformation
9:00 Arla Milkchain - how they are using blockchain to trace their products and animal welfare (see video)
21:00 Collaborations Arla is looking for and what obstacles they are facing to scale
26:00 Other sustainability projects at Arla
28:40 Vision for the future and what we're missing to get there

Next Episode

Nordic Food Policy Lab's Marie Persson on taking climate action through food

The Nordic Food Policy Lab was launched by the 5 prime ministers of the Nordic countries in 2017 to curate and share examples of Nordic food policy for health and sustainability. They do this through global partnerships and dialogues. Their goal is meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals through food policy. They also help other countries in achieving the goals.

In this episode, Marie Persson provides an overview of what is happening within food policy across the Nordics. We also take a look at the COP25 UN climate negotiations from a Nordic angle and what a sustainable, healthy diet looks like.

7:30 Overview of the Nordics strengths and weaknesses when it comes to food & food policy
9:40 Why food is such a tricky political conversation
16:30 Examples of individuals taking climate action through food
20:20 What is needed for policy to encourage sustainable production and consumption
25:35 Why more chefs and behavioral psychologists are needed in politics

This episode is part of Taste the Transition, a series of lunch conversations during the COP25 climate negotiations highlighting individuals taking climate action through food. Tell us your vision for the food system on www.nordicfoodtech.io/answer or by using the hashtag #NordicClimateAction