About Olio

Half of the clothes in our wardrobes are never worn, and one third of food produced globally is never eaten. Meanwhile, our planet is on fire and people everywhere are struggling to make ends meet.

Olio is an app that solves this injustice by allowing people to pass on household items and food they no longer need to locals living nearby. By encouraging sharing or borrowing instead of throwing things away or buying new, Olio helps avoid waste while supporting communities and the planet. 

Originally created to fight food waste, Olio is now fighting against anything going to waste. We believe this will empower everyone to become part of the solution and solve the climate crisis by ending waste, one share at a time. 

Over the past 10 years Olio has grown from a local initiative in North London to a global movement. We now have 8.5m million users who have given away 110m meals and 14m million household items across 64 countries. 

This growth has been underpinned by our incredible ambassador programme, with 60k people helping to spread the word about Olio in their local community. We’re also helping over 200 businesses across the UK – including Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda – with over 8,000 sites to reach zero food waste via our Food Waste Heroes Programme, in which 140k food safety-trained Olio volunteers collect unsold food and redistribute it to their local communities via the app.

We’ve been recognised by the United Nations, who highlighted Olio as a “beacon” for the world, and by Vivatech who awarded Olio “Next European Unicorn”. 

The goal now is to get everyone into the world-changing habit of sharing. 

Background

We share our high-level impact on our website (here) and also break this impact down for clients at a client-level. This impact is currently expressed in terms of redistribution and environmental impact stats. 

The purpose of this project is two-fold:

1. Review, and provide an independent opinion on, the methodology for calculating our environmental impact data to ensure it’s stage appropriate and defensible. In light of recent greenwashing allegations across the industry we’re keen to ensure that our methodology is robust enough
2. Assist us with adding social impact to our overarching calculation of impact. We’ve created a first draft of the framework and the planned survey to collect input data using guidance provided by MeasureUp – but require an expert to review that this is a robust and stage appropriate approach

We’ve also recently launched new business models related to helping food businesses sell food at a discount – in addition to our core redistribution offering. We’d like to discuss with you whether it would make sense to count any environmental or social impact for these – as well as potential other business models (e.g. rental) we might explore in the future.

What we’re looking for

We’ll be doing the heavy lifting by producing a comprehensive document outlining all our current and proposed calculation methodology. We simply require someone to review this document, propose any methodology improvements, and provide a written opinion on the robustness and stage appropriate-ness of the methodology. We’ll provide whatever access is needed to relevant senior stakeholders (e.g. Tessa Clarke, CEO; Saasha Celestial-One, COO and Rohan Sheth, Chief of Staff) who can answer any questions you might have as you prepare your opinion.

You should be someone that:

• Has numerous case studies of similar ‘impact methodology review’ projects
• Has a good standing and reputation within the industry – evidenced by accreditations, awards, membership of panels etc.
• Can work quickly to deliver maximum ROI and knows how to balance methodological rigor with operational and commercial practicalities
• Experience with food waste would be strongly preferred
  

Next steps

If this sounds like you, please email rohan.sheth@olioapp.com with:

• A copy of your CV
• 1-2 paragraphs on why you think you match our requirements
• An approximate timescale to complete this project (if you require further information to provide a timescale please let us know)
• Availability to conduct this project
• Daily rate