Prevention is better than cure, especially when it comes to food waste.
Singapore has a food waste problem. The overall amount of food waste generated in 2020 was 665,000 tonnes, or about 11 per cent of the total waste generated in Singapore (source : NEA). This amounts to roughly S$342 million of wasted food, labor, resources, and energy.
RELEVANT SUSTAINABLE GOALS
CLOSE-TO-EXPIRY PRODUCTS AND THE INEVITABLE TRIP TO THE BIN
Expiry dates. Checking the “best before” or “expiry date” labels on foods, from pasta and cheese to bread and meats, is one of the first things consumers do before putting them in their grocery carts. When it comes to close-to-expiry products, consumers often choose not to purchase them with the fear of the products not being fresh and edible. What happen next is predictable: into the garbage it goes. The whole batch of close-to-expiry products heads to the landfill or is otherwise wasted even though they are still in good condition.
To solve this issue, Savour! app, a local student-led tech startup with the aim of tackling food wastage and food insecurity through their B2B and B2C e-commerce marketplace platform, onboarded merchants with goods that have short shelf life to sell these perfectly edible products at bulk discounts to customers.
On 1 June 2021, Savour! managed to sell over 1,300 of perfectly good, edible short shelf life Haidilao Self-Heating Hotpots at $1 each that would have otherwise been landfilled in a span of only 2 days. This marked the success of Savour! Group Buy efforts to reach out to group buy leaders in university hostels and HDB blocks; as well as share the good deals via Savour!’s social media channels to date.
SAVOUR!’S COMMUNITY GROUP BUY INITIATIVE
Savour!’s newly launched B2C Community Group Buy Initiative offers a wide variety of short shelf life F&B products that are still perfectly good for consumption at exclusive limited-time clearance discounts, which are significantly lower than retail prices.
I think that food waste is a significant problem that also happens on the distributor side when they cannot sell off items that ended up expiring and were thrown away. This is another layer of food waste problem that we need to solve on top of people throwing away unfinished meals or food. With this initiative, we hope to help reduce food waste while assisting distributors in recuperating their costs. Ultimately, to reduce food waste is to find the balance between the supply and demand, and what we are doing here is finding the need for items with shorter shelf life. This period, we have managed to save $1000+ worth of food which may have gone into the landfill otherwise. Although this achievement is great, it is still far from perfect as demand is still quite irregular and unsustainable.
SANSESAN X HAI DI LAO HOTPOT CHARITY DISTRIBUTION
Aligned with the community Group Buy, Savour! was also collaborated with SanSeSan and redistributed a total of 710 boxes of close to expiry hotpots to the less privileged in Singapore. our beneficiaries with the aim to help reduce food wastage whenever possible. A total of 39 cartons of Self heating Hai Di Lao Hotpots were distributed from SanSeSan, one of Savour!’s partnering merchants for our Community Group Buy effort, to Good Karma Singapore and Healthy Green Living, two of non-profit organisation B2B customers supported by Savour!.
Savour! plans to release more good short shelf life food deals for group buying every week that comprises snacks, instant food, and more that is exclusively discounted from 30% to 90% off. Interested customers can check out Savour!’s listings that are posted regularly on Savour!’s social media pages and simply send a direct message (DM) to Savour! to order.
For businesses who are interested to join Savour!’s Group Buy initiative and be part of Savour!’s journey in empowering consumers to save more while saving the earth, you could apply here at tinyurl.com/savoursignup. Last but not least, you can find more information on Savour!’s Community Group Buy here.
ABOUT SAVOUR! APP :
Savour! app is a tech startup formed by a group of university students seeks to reduce food waste and food insecurity issues in Singapore by helping businesses sell their close-to-expiry goods to both B2B and B2C customers at clearance discounts and in-kind sponsorships. To learn more about Savour!’s initiatives, you can check out Savour!’s Website blog, Facebook, Instagram,LinkedIn and Telegram Page.
