Y Waste Is the New App Tackling Food Waste by Hooking You Up with Cheap Eats

Use it to search for local venues offloading surplus food, on the cheap
Libby Curran
August 20, 2018

If you've ever been stuck with the job of throwing away perfectly good food at the end of a hospitality shift, it probably won't shock you that Australian retailers are turfing over three million tonnes of food each year. Or that 80 percent of it is being chucked out simply because it wasn't sold.

Thankfully, folks across the country are tackling the issue of unnecessary food waste head-on, with groups like OzHarvest and SecondBite built around the concept of redistributing unused food to the needy.

And now, you can help fight the issue and save money on grub simultaneously, thanks to a new locally born app called Y Waste.

Currently operating in Adelaide, Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne, the app helps you locate businesses in your area that have surplus food to offload at the end of the day. You can then purchase it at a discounted price, paying via your smartphone and picking it up from the venue at the allocated time.

Depending on which city you're searching in, you might find sandwiches and salads from the local cafe, unsold pastries from that nearby bakery, or even freshly made pizzas, all going cheap. The only restriction is that you have to take what's left — so if you're a picky eater or have dietary restrictions, this may not be for you.

Sydney's offering includes Newtown's The Pie Tin, which is serving up a box of unsold pies for $2.90, Sol Coffee Bar in Campsie, serving up a mix of sandwiches and salads for $4, and Neutral Bay's Tonic Lane, which has mixed bags of cold and hot dishes going for $5.

In Melbourne, you'll find venues like Coburg's Falafel House, serving up two falafels for $7, and Richmond's Fruscolino Pizza, with a large pizza going for only $9.90, in the lineup. In Brisbane, you can snag $5 pizzas at South Brisbane's Presto Pizza and $2.75 breads, sandwiches and muffins from 3Js Cafe in Woody Point.

Now you can nab a budget-friendly feed and feel good about your efforts.

The Y Waste app is available to for iOS and Android.

Image: The Pie Tin, Newtown

Published on August 20, 2018 by Libby Curran
Tap and select Add to Home Screen to access Concrete Playground easily next time. x