According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, humanity wastes more than one billion tonnes of food every year. That number amounts to almost a third of all food produced for human consumption and would be enough to feed the world’s hungry twice. Richer countries’ food waste is almost equal to overall food production in Sub-Saharan regions; European and North American citizens produce up to 15 times more waste than people living in developing countries. These numbers are especially alarming when taking into account that, since 2014, world hunger has been on the rise again; as of 2017, roughly 821 million people suffer from undernourishment.

Luana Carretto, an alumna of Amsterdam University College, first recognized this problem in November 2012 after watching a documentary on the topic made her see the colossal losses caused by premature waste. And not only the food itself is wasted, but also all the resources used to produce it; immense amounts of water is therefore used for nothing and manpower invested into its production becomes pointless. The realization that humanity does not treat food with the value it deserves led her to start the initiative ‘Taste Before You Waste’ (TBYW). After initially approaching stores for their surplus food and distributing it under refugees in cooperation with refugee advocacy group Wij Zijn Hier, she decided that her own organization would be the more efficient solution in the long run.