Share Your Unwanted Food With Strangers With LeftoverSwap

Have you ever been at a restaurant, and someone at the next table orders something that looks amazing? And then they don’t finish it, but instead of taking it home with them they leave it there to be thrown away. Sometimes you’re the one doing it. There could be a wide variety of reasons to throw away food (for me, it’s almost always because I’m going somewhere I don’t have access to a refrigerator), but wasting food just bugs me. There could be a way soon that will allow perfect strangers to share the remains of their meals, so no one goes hungry and food doesn’t go to waste.

I assume you’re skeptical. I certainly am. Because while for a second I thought this was a good idea, it opens a whole new world of possibilities for illness and even death depending on the person giving away the food. It might be nothing worse than a cold, but the potential is there for a number of illnesses that I just don’t want to risk for the sake of cheap (or free) food. Perhaps I would feel differently if I were starving.

Anyway, how this is supposed to work is you take a picture of your leftover food and upload it. Then others in the area can search for what food is available and contact you. From there, you can arrange to meet them somewhere to pass it on. According to the developers, there is a lot of logic involved here (as long as you ignore the ick factor). About 40% of the food we produce goes to waste. Approximately 70% of us are overweight (and often feel obligated to finish a meal even after we’re full). They also claim this is a good way to meet your neighbours, since you’ll have to talk to them when you exchange food. They’ve outlined a correlation between how much fossil fuel we can save by using this app to how many Northern Spotted Owls there could be (they are an endangered species), although I don’t quite follow the logic.

Currently, this is in development, and you can sign up with your email address to ensure you are among the first to hear about it when it’s complete. The first stage will be available for iOS, with an Android version to follow. No word on if or how much this will cost at this point. Me, I think I’ll be skipping this one. I don’t need food badly enough to eat a stranger’s half-finished plate of linguine.

Source: Oh Gizmo