Good Qs with Tessa Clarke, CEO of OLIO
Tessa Clarke is the founder of OLIO, the food sharing app, enabling millions to give away food and household items to their neighbours.
Founded in 2016, Olio has helped 3.9 million users share over 21 million portions of food and save 3 billion litres of water.
We sat down with Tessa to discuss making a difference, Green tax credits and the sharing economy 2.0.
OLIO is an amazing app, could you tell us a little about what inspired it?
I’m a farmer’s daughter, and so have always hated throwing away good food. This is because I know from first-hand experience just how much hard work goes into producing it! As a result, the inspiration for OLIO came when I was moving country and found myself on moving day with some good food that we hadn’t managed to eat, but that I couldn’t bring myself to throw away. So I set off on a bit of a wild goose chase to try and find someone to give it to, and I failed miserably. Through the whole process it seemed to me crazy that I should have to throw this 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 that connects neighbours to share food came about!
What is the most exciting thing about your job?
So many things! The first is waking up every day and knowing that what I’m doing is making a real difference to the planet, people and local communities. I also love the variety of what I do which can see me working with the team on the design of a new feature in the app, to doing a Q&A such as this, to speaking to investors about fundraising so we can grow much more quickly. There’s never a dull moment!
What excites you most about OLIO’s impact on food waste?
I’m most excited by the fact that half of all food waste takes place in the home (UK households throw away a whopping £14 billion of food that could’ve been eaten every year), and OLIO is a really simple, safe, fast and fun way to solve that. I passionately believe that if we can harness the power of mobile technology to re-connect people with their neighbours, then we can take the fight against food waste into our own hands and really start to tackle it once and for all.
This is urgently needed because a group of world leading climate change scientists recently stack-ranked the top 100 solutions to the climate crisis and in position #1 was reducing food waste – this came above electric cars, above solar power and above a plant based diet.
Where do you see the future of the sharing economy?
The sharing economy is on the cusp of an exciting new dawn and is only just starting to unlock its full potential. Companies such as Uber and Airbnb which were part of the sharing economy 1.0 were in many ways just facilitating what I call micro-capitalism, and weren’t really about ‘sharing’ at all. Whereas the 2.0 wave of sharing economy companies such as OLIO, Borrow My Doggy, Trusted Housesitters, Nuw Wardrobe and many others really are about sharing in the purest sense of the word. As we look at the wildly unsustainable level of consumption we have in our economies today, it’s extremely clear to me that sharing is going to have to move from being on the periphery of economics, to being right at the very heart of it.
What are the small changes we can make to reduce our impact on the planet?
There are hundreds of small actions that we can each take to reduce our impact on the planet – after all, billions of small actions got us into the climate crisis in the first place, so surely billions of small actions can help get us out? We have a section in the OLIO app called GOALS, which is a bit like tinder for sustainable living – you can right swipe to put a GOAL on your to-do list, and left swipe to maybe do it later. Already our community has undertaken over 1 million simple swaps to lead more sustainable lives, ranging from small things such as swapping your plastic toothbrush for a bamboo one, all the way up to switching your energy provider or moving your pension/bank account.
Do you have any exciting plans for OLIO?
I’m extremely excited for later this summer when we’ll be launching a new feature – Borrow – on the OLIO app. This will enable OLIOers to lend and borrow everyday household items to one another. Think cat carriers, camping stoves, ladders & drills, books & board games, fancy dress costumes, popcorn makers and more. I’m also excited to build upon our early international expansion efforts and see OLIO really growing across the world because sadly waste in the home is a global phenomenon that needs to be urgently addressed.
What challenges are obstructing more sustainability in your industry?
If I had a magic wand I would wave it to unlock four things: 1. Big businesses would have to report on the levels of waste that take place throughout their business operations; 2. Government would convene industry to come up with a standardised sustainability labelling to be applied to all consumer goods, thereby giving people the information they need at the point of purchase to shop sustainably; 3. Government would provide a ‘green’ R&D tax credit to provide additional funding for green startups and also facilitate the creation of an easily accessible carbon market for green startups to be able to sell their carbon credits; and 4. Everybody would start to realise that what they do does count and that individual action is an incredible catalyst for change.
Do you recycle? Should we recycle?
I’m an avid recycler. BUT… we are NOT going to recycle our way out of the multiple crises facing humanity (climate, biodiversity, resource depletion). Instead we have to focus our energies on all the other actions that come much higher up the waste reduction hierarchy i.e. refuse, reduce and re-use. I think it’s also super important that people understand that sadly much of the plastic we put out to be recycled doesn’t actually get recycled and even when it is, plastic can only be recycled one or two times before it can’t be recycled again. So it should more accurately be called ‘downcycling’ when it comes to plastic I’m afraid.
How do you take care of yourself? What are your self-care tips?
Given that building something like OLIO is like running a series of marathons rather than a sprint, I appreciate how important self-care is. My number 1 tip is to schedule your self-care into the working day. So each day of the week you’ll find me taking out an hour or so to go for a walk, a run, or a bike ride. That’s when I not only get fit and restore my mental energy, but it’s also when I have my very best breakthrough ideas for OLIO, so it’s a triple win!
What is on your must see or must read list right now?
I’ve just finished reading Jason Hickel’s amazing book, Less is More. It’s become increasingly obvious to me that endless GDP growth in a resource constrained planet makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and that our economics needs completely reinventing. Jason’s book provides the academic data and rigour to outline exactly why this is the case, and what we can do about it. I also always recommend the great classic which is Naomi Klein’s book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate.
What is your favourite dish to order from OLIO?
There’s someone who lives near me who makes the most incredibly sourdough bread, so every couple of weeks I’ll cycle over to his house and order a few loaves
What Good News have you had/heard this week?
This week the new Right to Repair law came into effect, which means that manufacturers are now legally required to make spare parts available to people buying electrical appliances – hurrah!
The aim of the new rules is to extend the lifespan of products by up to 10 years, and hopefully start to eliminate the scourge of forced obsolescence and reduce household appliance waste.