The U.S. retiree Susan Teaford has cut her grocery expenditures through bargain seeking and pursuing bargains as end dates approach.

Teaford now checks the Flash Food app for expiring goods at her Arlington, Virginia, grocery shop when she needs groceries.

As their shelf life expires, Giant and Meijer sell greens, fruit, bread, smoked fish, pork, and more at half to two-thirds off.

Teaford had decreased bills and a great sense of contentment even as prices rose post-pandemic.

“I detest food waste and love a good bargain,” Teaford, 66, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation as she prepared a rack of ribs she bought on Flash Food for half price.

Teaford claimed she saved $450 on groceries this year, which spurred numerous neighbors to sign up.

“It’s logical,” she said. “We’re thrifty.”

Food waste apps reduce emissions and save money. Rising food production causes deforestation, and farming, processing, and delivery need fossil fuels.

According to the UN, the typical person wastes 74 kg of food each year, while the globe produces enough food for everyone.

Price hikes

Food waste apps have been around for years, but close observers say economic instability, from COVID-19 to conflict in Ukraine, has heightened their profile and increased adoption.

Flashfood, currently in over 1,500 North American stores, has been downloaded 2.5 million times and claims its user base has grown 40% in the past year due to the cost-of-living crisis.

Russia’s war in Ukraine and supply chain issues have raised food and energy prices, pushing US inflation to 8%, the most since the 1970s.

According to government data, 10% of U.S. households—13.5 million—are food insecure.

Due to job losses and poverty, Feeding America claims the pandemic has intensified hunger, especially in families with children and communities of colour.

“As grocery prices rise, people are looking at the app more,” said Flashfood CEO Josh Domingues.

Since then, the company claims to have saved shoppers $130 million and diverted over 50 million pounds (22.7 million kg) of food from landfills.

Sepideh Burkett, Meijer’s 240-store vice president of retail experience, stated, “We’re seeing fantastic uptake of the Flash Food programme.”

She claimed Flash Food reduced in-store food waste by 10% in early tests as Meijer aims for a 50% decrease by the end of the decade.

SOFTWARE

Dana Gunders, executive director of ReFED, a charity that seeks systemic change to halve U.S. food waste and loss by 2030, said the epidemic sparked interest in food waste and how to reduce it.

“We’ve seen several food-waste-reduction initiatives succeed in the previous few years,” she said.

She called this a “flywheel effect,” with $500 million in 2019 investments growing to $2 billion last year.

Waste can be unharvested fields, home leftovers, windfall fruit, or soggy catered canapes, Gunders added.

“Technology has come in with a new ability to broadcast information in real time to a big bunch of people and make (some) this food available,” Gunders said.

Too Good to Go, an app that lets users place a $5 “order” with a restaurant, bakery, or other local business, buys them a surprise bag of whatever must go by closing time.

The 2016 Copenhagen-based app’s co-founder, Lucie Basch, said “retailers didn’t really have an answer” to food waste.

She stated large organizations cannot visit every metropolitan bakery near closing time, so lots gets thrown out.

Users usually get three times their food.

“To pay for just a third is amazing,” she remarked. “It aligns commercial and ecological interests.”

Too Good to Go saves 300,000 meals daily with approximately 70 million people in 17 countries.

Apps have helped the needy, too, as the pandemic boosted awareness among Americans about hunger near to home, said Melissa Spiesman, chief operating officer at Food Rescue US.

The group maintains an app that connects farms, restaurants and others with thousands of volunteers in 21 states who pick up extra food and distribute it to soup kitchens, shelters and hunger relief organizations.

“We got calls from everyone in the beginning of COVID-19,” she added. “We were swamped with tonnes of food.”

As supply channels stalled, farms appealed for workers or orders.

“There was something that woke up a lot of individuals,” she remarked. “More people know about services and more communities want to help.”

Although the Pakistan cricket team was getting ready to host the first Test series between the two countries since 2005, some members of the visiting English team fell unwell the day before the series was set to begin, casting uncertainty on whether or not the series would even begin on time. The Cricket Boards of both Pakistan and England have issued statements on the matter.

The PCB and the ECB have confirmed that the first test may not begin on the originally scheduled date.

A number of England players have been struck down by a viral virus, and as a result, the PCB and the ECB have issued a joint statement confirming that the first Test may be postponed. ESPN Cricinfo reports that England players have been diagnosed with a stomach sickness that has resulted in diarrhoea and vomiting, yet neither cricketing board has released any information regarding the disease.

This is not a food-borne or COVID-19-related sickness, former England captain Joe Root has stated. “We rule out Covid and dietary causes. We’re crossing our fingers that this is a one-day glitch that will clear up by tomorrow “Root told BBC Sport about his reasoning in an interview.

The 31-year-old believes that the England team can fully recover in one day, hence the first Test between England and Pakistan may be postponed by one day. “It’s a historic tour and crucial series for a number of reasons. We have been trying to play a Test match in Pakistan for 17 years. Do you really think that waiting one more day is the worst thing that could happen? We’re all eager to get on the field, and we recognise the stakes for Pakistani sports fans and their team “adverbial Root was added.

It has been suggested that Root may lead England in the first Test against Pakistan if regular captain Ben Stokes is unable to play due to an injury. Root was asked the same question and said, “That doesn’t seem likely to me. Popey filled in for the team last week and performed admirably in the exhibition game. In the long run, the strategy may be best for the group.”

The upcoming winter session of Parliament will feature debate on a number of private member’s bills, including one that would make it illegal for the provision of non-vegetarian food in any capacity within the government, as well as another that would outlaw the practise of bribery in the private sector.

According to a notification from the Lok Sabha, a total of twenty legislation that were submitted by members have been listed for discussion during this session. Although the vast majority of private member bills are shot down in Parliament after only a few minutes of debate, 14 of these pieces of legislation have been successful in getting through the chamber since the country’s independence. The most recent one was authorized in the year 1970.

The Official Government Meetings and Functions (Prohibition on Serving Non-Vegetarian Food) Bill has been proposed by Parvesh Sahib Singh, a member of Parliament for the BJP who represents West Delhi. ‘Germany’s environment ministry submitted a proposal to ban non-vegetarian food in government meetings and functions as it has a huge effect on climate and global warming,’ Singh claims.

Singh emphasized that the proposed legislation does not attempt to prohibit all forms of non-vegetarian cuisine for the general public. But even if just the government takes action, we can make progress toward more environmentally responsible lifestyles and more sustainable food systems, he said.

Tirath Singh Rawat, another member of the BJP, had the intention of introducing a measure that would make yoga a required subject in all of the nation’s schools. “Yoga must be taught at the school level in the formative years,” stated the former Chief Minister of Uttarakhand, who would pilot the Compulsory Teaching of Yoga in Educational Institutions Bill. It is beneficial to one’s physical as well as cerebral development.

The MGNREGS (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) law is going to be amended, and two opposition MPs, NK Premachandran and VK Sreekandan, both of whom are from Kerala, will be pushing measures with the same objective: to change section 3. According to the provisions of Section 3, the state government is obligated to provide employment to each and every worker for a maximum of one hundred days each year.

The measures are a response to numerous opposition leaders’ demands that an individual be required to labour up to 150 days. The federal government, on the other hand, has steadfastly refused to raise the yearly limit, arguing instead that in the event of a natural disaster, a state is permitted, under the terms of the legislation, to provide employment for up to 150 days.

The Member of Parliament for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Rama Devi, will introduce a measure to ban bribery in the business sector, while the Member of Parliament for the Congress Party, Dean Kuriakose, will introduce a bill to provide compensation to people who have been injured by wildlife. In addition to this, it is anticipated that individual members would propose a number of bills to amend the Constitution.