Salford woman’s tweet about unwanted food app goes viral

When Mairead McMahon tweeted her praise for an app that reduces food waste she had no idea it would captures the public’s attention so widely.

Mairead, 25, who lives near Salford Cathedral and works in marketing, highlighted the food-waste app Olio in a tweet that garnered over 5,000 retweets.

Mairead said: “Reducing food waste is something I am quite passionate about, and this is the main aim of the app, but it’s so helpful in so many different ways.”

“I was a bit septical when I first used it. After I used it a few times, it became obvious that this was a good thing.

Hey guys. Anyone in Manchester struggling for food, please consider downloading an app called Olio. Pret donate their daily surplus food to ‘Food Waste Heroes’ to distribute. This wasn’t even half of the surplus food tonight. Please RT. pic.twitter.com/1TaVPDxyn4

— Mairéad (@MaireadMcMahon) October 1, 2018

“Since the tweet, a few others have been using it too. People donate anything, sometimes it just rice or porridge, and sometimes its surplus food from Pret.”

Mairead says she previously used the app to get food when money was tight.

“I didn’t have a lot of money, I had just got home from three months in China, so money was quite tight.

“There’s a lot of people in this area who could benefit from this, so I thought if I share it, and a few people see it, then it could really help them out.

“I know that there’s families out there struggling to pay for their children’s lunches through no fault of their own.

The app has over 650,000 users nationwide and its main aim is to reduce food waste.

Tessa Cook, who co-founded the app, said: “It’s unacceptable that one third of all food produced in the world gets thrown away, especially when food waste is so environmentally damaging.

“With well over half of all food waste taking place in the home and local community, Olio wants to empower each and every one of us to step up and change this by sharing and saving food in a way that’s food and easy.”

Over one million portions of food have been shared so far via the Olio app.