Food waste app Karma launched in November 2016 and has quickly made a success among Swedish restaurants, bakeries and cafés. So far, more than two and half tons of food have been saved by consumers instead of ending up in the trash. As the first grocery store chain, ICA now starts a cooperation with Karma.

In Sweden, half a million tons of food is unnecessarily discarded each year, which costs society a lot of money and has a large impact on the climate. Only by reducing food waste by 20 percent, it is estimated that Sweden can save between 10-15 billion Swedish kronor.

A large proportion of food waste occurs at home in households, but also in the food industry a lot of food that is of high quality is discarded. In this segment, food saver service Karma has taken up the fight to reduce food waste from restaurants, cafés and bakeries.

Karma is now establishing a collaboration with ICA to reduce food waste also in the grocery business.

– Reducing food waste is a major issue for ICA and we are working on this in many different ways throughout the chain. When waste still occurs in ICA stores, the cooperation with the Karma is a good way for stores to minimize food waste further, says Kerstin Lindvall, ICA Group’s Director of Corporate Responsibility.

With Karma, restaurants are given the opportunity to make money from their surplus food by selling their unsold portions while they are still in a quality condition. Though the Karma app, consumers will be able to buy takeaway food at half price. So far, over 13 000 meals have been rescued with the help of the service, which is equal to two and a half tons of food, which would otherwise have been thrown out.

With about 1 300 stores, ICA is the leading food retailer in Sweden and will implement Karma in one store at a time. First out is ICA Nära Sveavägen and ICA Kvantum Liljeholmen in Stockholm, which will sell their surplus of ready meals in Karma app.

– It will be exciting to be the first grocery store to collaborate with Karma. Everbody wins in this cooperation. We reduce our food waste further in the store and more customers get the opportunity to save good food, says Nessrin Ebrahim, trader ICA Nära Sveavägen.

Karma is available for download both on the App Store for the iPhone and the Google Play Store for Android.

> More on Karma: www.karma.life