Tessa Clarke of OLIO a So Energy invisible hero

Invisible Heroes 01 - Tessa Clarke, OLIO

So Energy

Hello and welcome to our first Invisible Heroes conversation. Over the coming weeks, we're going to be exploring and sharing the insights and personal stories of some of the most pioneering people working behind the scenes on innovations and initiatives to encourage all of us to improve the impact of our everyday living and operations, from how we consume to how we move. 

To launch our Invisible Heroes series, this week we speak to Tessa Clarke, Co-Founder & CEO of food sharing app and social enterprise OLIO. Tessa and her team are on a mission to stop edible surplus food from going to waste in the UK and help feed more people in crisis in their local communities.

Can you tell us about your current role; what do you do, and what are the steps you’ve taken that led you to this job?

I grew up on a farm with my family - and you name it, we did it, feeding cows, mucking out, moving stock; it was relentless at times, but I loved it. I learned pretty much as soon as I could walk just how much hard work goes into producing the food that we all eat. As a result, I absolutely hate food waste and always have. But I never knew it would lead me to what we’re doing at OLIO right now.

I took a traditional career path, University followed by a fairly classic corporate career. But this all changed when I was moving country and found myself on moving day with some good food that we hadn’t managed to eat, and I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. So I set off on a bit of a wild goose chase to try and find someone to give it to and to cut a long story short, I failed miserably. Through the whole process, it seemed crazy to me that I should have to throw perfectly good food away, when there were surely plenty of people within hundreds of metres of me who would love it, the problem was they just didn’t know about it. And so the idea of OLIO, a mobile app where neighbours can share their surplus food, came about!

We’ve been on an incredible journey, and an integral part of our growth has been our 50,000 ambassadors helping to spread the word in communities near them. We’ve now got over 20k trained food waste heroes who are collecting and redistributing surplus food from local businesses that include folks such as Tesco, Pret, Costa, Compass Catering and so on.

What’s the one thing that makes you feel most excited to go to work in the morning? 

Solving the climate crisis and helping people; connecting communities; being able to do something that makes a difference.

If you could encourage readers to make one small change to their day-to-day lives in order to positively impact the planet, what would it be?

It might sound self-serving - but stop wasting food!

I’d encourage people to check out Project Drawdown. It’s a collaborative piece of work by the world’s leading climate change scientists. They stack-ranked the top 100 solutions to the climate crisis, and in March of last year they released their latest data. It found the number one thing humanity can do to mitigate the worst effects of the climate crisis is to reduce food waste. This came above electric cars, above solar power, and above a plant-based diet. 

In a country such as the UK, half of all food waste takes place in the home, with the average UK family throwing away £730 of food each year that could have been eaten, collectively adding up to £14billion. And so giving away rather than throwing away your spare food is a really simple, really fun, really high impact way to make a difference.

What’s been your go-to book/podcast/show over lockdown? 

I’m obsessed with podcasts - I actually wrote an entire blog post on my favourites. Over the last few months, I’ve been binging on old episodes of How I Built This and reread This Changes Everything - Capitalism vs. the Climate by Naomi Klein.

Do you think that the pandemic has impacted people’s views around how we shop, cook and eat? If so, how

Yes, it’s had an enormous impact. We’ve seen that directly here at OLIO with the number of listings coming onto the app each month growing five-fold in 2020. 

There’s several reasons for that, so first of all, you only need to see a few photographs of empty supermarket shelves to realise on a very visceral level that food is precious; food is quite literally our life source. Indeed, Hubbub did some research that showed that over 50% of people say they are valuing food more, and also wasting food less. 

The other thing that’s happened during the pandemic is we’ve realised just how much hunger there is in our societies - and yet we’re awash with food. Obviously it’s completely wrong that those two things co-exist. But community can play an incredibly powerful role; people have realised that they want to help; to be part of their communities, help their neighbours, make sure no one goes without. So we’ve seen this massive outburst of neighbourly kindness.

And then finally on a very practical level, because many of us are locked in our homes, we’re wanting to de-clutter, and also to have an opportunity to connect with neighbours in a way that is safe during Covid. OLIO’s no-contact pick-up model is a really great way to do that.

What big trends do you expect to see next from the tech-for-good sector?

I believe very passionately that for far too long, we’ve been stuck in this ridiculous dichotomy thinking that only charities can do good, and only businesses can grow and scale. At OLIO we believe in this third path: profit with purpose. We believe that is going to be the new business paradigm. As a business you’ll lose the license to exist if you’re not having a positive impact on the planet and on people.