[09. Educative
It is the packaging that, as a widespread object, knows how to take charge of its educational function.
Packaging is a tool that is fully part of everyone’s daily lives, integrated in a constant dialogue with its recipient. Hence, it has an extensive educational potential: its dissemination makes it a powerful tool also in this regard.
The story of Too Good To Go: from mobile application to movement for consumer education
‘Look, Smell, Taste, Don’t Waste’ (observe, smell, taste, don’t waste) is the campaign that Too Good To Go has launched to combat waste, in collaboration with some of the largest food groups internationally. Through an intervention on the labeling of packaging, the goal is to raise awareness among consumers and make them reflect on the way in which we evaluate whether or not food is safe to eat.
Every year, one third of food destined for human consumption is wasted, particularly in industrialized and developing countries, becoming responsible for approximately 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Among the reasons why this phenomenon is generated, one of the most relevant is the difficulty on the part of consumers to understand the labels of the products, in particular the expiry dates.
The confusion in reading the information is due to the variety of expressions used, including ‘Best Before’ (to be consumed preferably within), ‘Use by’ (to be consumed within), ‘Display Until’ or ‘Sell by’ (to be placed in sale by). Such confusion would be the cause of around 9,000,000 tonnes of food waste in Europe every year.
Too Good To Go was born as a free mobile application in 2016 in Denmark, with the aim of saving unsold and still perfectly edible food, creating a real anti-waste network.
The idea behind Too Good To Go originates in 2015, when its creators, after participating in a free buffet, note with disbelief how all the food not consumed at the end of the event is thrown in the trash even if still in excellent conditions. It is after that episode that they decided to create and develop a digital platform that connects restaurants, supermarkets and other commercial establishments with unsold and still perfectly edible food available, with people interested in buying that food at the end of the day at a reduced price.
The application has spread rapidly throughout Europe and is currently available in 14 countries. At the beginning of 2020, after obtaining the certification as B Corp, Too Good To Go begins its expansion towards the United States.
In addition to the development of the app, Too Good To Go has been dedicated over the years to institutional advocacy actions and initiatives to raise awareness of companies and consumers about food waste, creating, among other things, educational material for schools and information campaigns, and giving life to a truly global movement.
The ‘Look, Smell, Taste, Don’t Waste’ campaign is launched in 2021 in the UK, with the aim of clearing up the confusion between ‘Use By’ and ‘Best Before’, inviting consumers to use their senses to evaluate the edibility of a food.
According to a survey conducted by Too Good To Go before launching the campaign, almost half of the people interviewed say they do not clearly understand the dates indicated on the packaging and cannot understand the difference between the expiration date (‘Use By’ ), referring to the time limit within which a food must necessarily be consumed due to its high biological perishability, and the date of preferable consumption (‘Best Before’), a term beyond which the organoleptic quality of the product is reduced, but without implying necessarily a health risk.
However, in addition to knowing how to correctly distinguish these two indications, Too Good To Go argues that to determine the edibility of food products in the pantry or in the refrigerator one must use one’s senses: to assess whether a food is still good to eat, it is necessary to observe it (‘Look ‘), smell it (‘Smell’), taste it (‘Taste’) and then trust your own judgment.
It is therefore a question of a ‘double’ education in consumption: on the one hand, we want to make people understand how to correctly read the labels of the packages; on the other hand, to bring people closer to food to recover direct experience.
With the development of industrial production and the high level of transformation of products, together with the affirmation of self-service sales systems and large-scale distribution, there has in fact been a progressive move away from food and its knowledge over time. It is from this distancing that the transfer of responsibility to the packaging in communicating its content derives, consolidating its fundamental role as intermediary between the product and the consumer, and thus becoming a vehicle both for useful information for understanding the food and for raising awareness on waste and other issues of social and environmental importance.
