Sure the latest initiatives from the Teslas, Apples and Googles of the industry tend to dominate the tech news space — and with good reason. Still, the tech titans aren’t the only ones bringing innovation to the sector.
In an effort to highlight up-and-coming startups, Built In launched The Future 5 across 11 major U.S. tech hubs. Each quarter, we will feature five tech startups, nonprofits or entrepreneurs in each of these hubs who just might be working on the next big thing. You can check out last quarter’s San Francisco round-up here.
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At the end of last year, a brave citizen dove into a dumpster at a Whole Foods Market to determine how much food the company was wasting. The dumpster diver’s full haul was revealed in a TikTok that quickly went viral. In it, the creator shows off up to $1,000 worth of untouched, prepackaged food, from Beyond Meat to organic chicken and beef. Everything found had been thrown out on or before its “best by” date and since it was during the winter months, it was perfectly preserved.
As fascinating as that story is, it’s indicative of a much larger problem. Global food waste is at an all-time high. One-third of all food produced globally is either lost or wasted, according to waste management platform Copia. That equates to 1.3 billion tons annually.
Founded in 2016, San Francisco-based startup Copia provides businesses with a way to safely donate their excess food so it doesn’t go to waste or end up on another TikTok trash haul. Investors seem to be impressed so far; Copia has raised $4.7 million in venture capital financing to date, according to Crunchbase.
We love seeing the new and creative ways that communities come together to alleviate hunger. It doesn’t matter what your background is — education, race, religion, sexuality, etc. — all human beings deserve to eat, every day.”
To get started with Copia, business owners simply need to download the app and schedule their pickup. From there the platform instructs users on how to appropriately prepare and package their food. After that, Copia sends out a donation delivery driver to pick up the excess and deliver it safely to a local nonprofit recipient.
More than just a food delivery service, Copia provides its enterprise users with actionable insights about how they can lessen their food waste. These insights are drawn from data that the app collects over time. The Copia dashboard can help business owners track surplus trends, make better buying decisions and access tax savings.
“We love seeing the new and creative ways that communities come together to alleviate hunger. It doesn’t matter what your background is — education, race, religion, sexuality, etc. — all human beings deserve to eat, every day,” the company said in a Facebook post. “So we must all come together to end the stigma around hunger and to help feed our peers.”
