A clever 19-year-old student has cut her food shop bill to under €6 a month by collecting her neighbours’ food waste on a new app.
She started studying politics at the University of Manchester in September 2021, Daisy Berrington was looking for ways to save money as her budget was tight.
She decided to download an app called Olio - which is also available in certain areas of Ireland - where people list food items they are thinking of throwing away for others in the community to collect for free.
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Daisy has since lowered her food bills from €34 a month, and said: “I’ve managed to get my shopping down to under €6 a month.
“I’ve found that, combined with the things already in my cupboard and other things I’d collected, that it is more than enough to live off. Now I only really buy the stuff that doesn’t come up on the app as much, like eggs, yoghurts or ketchup.”
Explaining how the app works, she said: “You just sign up and food and non-food items will be listed near you. If you see anything you like, you just send a message to the person offering it in the app saying, ‘Can I have this please?’ and then they give you a date and time to pick the items up.
“I then cycle over to their house and collect the items. I say thank you, and that’s it. It’s as simple as that.”
She went on to say: “There’s such a wide variety of food so every day is a surprise, really. If there’s anything remotely expensive, I think it’s so nice of people to list it on the app.
“I’ve even got more expensive fruit like cherries, as well as gluten-free items, pancakes and good cuts of meat. I think I definitely eat better than most students since using Olio – I get a lot of vegetables off there so I’m never short of things like that.”
Daisy gets most of her basic ingredients from Olio, too, saying: “I can always get pasta and veg which are always good to cook with. There’s always bread on there too, so I cook a lot with that, like homemade garlic bread.”
That normally leaves her buying oat milk and herbs as well as tins, such as lentils, beans and chickpeas.
She said of the legumes she buys: “You can’t usually get them on the app, but I get them because they are high in protein and don’t break the bank.”
After she had been using the app for three months, Daisy decided to become a ‘food waste hero’ for Olio, where she works with a Tesco in Manchester and collects any wasted food at the end of the day.
She said: “It’s usually at about 9pm, and they give me everything that is going out of date. I get to keep up to 10% and choose what I need, which is great. I then list the rest on the app and people will request it and they’ll pick it up.”
For a full list of towns in Ireland where the Olio app is available, click here.
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