Tessa Clarke on turning edible surplus into measurable value

Accountancy Age spoke with Tessa Clarke, Co-founder and CEO of Olio, ahead of her ICAEW Annual Conference session Rethinking Waste: The Circular Economy Advantage, to discuss how waste reduction can unlock measurable business value. Clarke explained that the circular economy is a strategic opportunity. From food surplus to supply chains, she shared how businesses can convert waste into cost savings, new revenue streams, and stronger reputations through practical, trackable action.

Accountancy Age (AA): When you look at a business’s waste, where does the real value usually hide and which lever tends to unlock it fastest?

Clarke: The real value is in the brand and reputational goodwill generated from customers and employees by avoiding edible surplus food from going to waste. One in three people are ‘physically pained’ at throwing away good food so it’s a universal and visceral feeling. The fastest lever to unlock this value (once the food is being redistributed!) is marketing – which is why we co-market with all of our enterprise clients to highlight the amazing work being done by their store staff and our volunteers in redistributing edible surplus food to their local communities to keep it out of the bin.

AA: In the first week of a surplus-reduction project, who should be in the room, what is the first metric to track, and what does progress typically look like after 30 days?

Clarke: A typical project kick-off would involve a retailer’s Head of Sustainability and Head of Operations, and an Account Manager, Operations Manager and Senior Stakeholder from Olio. The key metric we track is edible food saved – from which we can calculate additional metrics such as meals saved (to make the amount of food saved more tangible) and CO2e emissions prevented from waste using standard conversion factors. 

Progress within 30 days depends on a number of factors, such as which Olio product(s) the retailer is implementing (we have 2 discounting and 2 redistribution offerings), whether a pilot has already been conducted, the technical setup (whether or not new integrations are required), as well as the pace that the retailer can mobilise their team internally. For a single site we can be up and redistributing surplus food within this timeframe, for a multi-site project we might well be in the pilot phase. 

AA: If you had to build a simple “waste → value” dashboard, which three metrics earn a place and how do you keep them audit-ready?

Clarke: We already provide clients with access to such a dashboard, which we call the ‘Partner Hub’.

In order to take clients on the journey from waste to value we provide the following metrics:

(1) Surplus redistributed: Edible food saved, measured in kilograms and meals equivalent

(2) Environmental impact: CO₂ emissions prevented from waste (converted into car miles taken off the road to make it more tangible) and water prevented from waste

(3) Societal value: Households fed

In order to keep our metrics audit-ready we have recently undergone a 3rd party review of our environmental impact methodology and a new proposed societal impact methodology covering things like our impact on physical and mental wellbeing. We plan on making our methodology publicly available in the coming months to demonstrate that it’s sufficiently robust relative to our stage of growth.

AA: What’s the cleanest evidence trail for proving redistribution/avoidance (data sources, controls, third-party checks) without creating busywork?

Clarke: The cleanest evidence trail is Olio’s proprietary data on food redistributed through the platform; combined with large-scale survey data to understand what happens to food after it’s been redistributed. We track every listing and pickup in real time, giving us an automatic audit trail, and our surveys are typically conducted with 1,000+ respondents to ensure statistical significance. We therefore avoid creating extra, unnecessary work for retailers or volunteers while still having suitably robust data.

AA: Supply chains can often block circularity. What’s one contract clause or KPI that genuinely changes behaviour, and what’s a common pitfall to avoid?

Clarke: A common pitfall is setting weight-based food waste targets without distinguishing between edible and inedible food. For instance, a retailer might meet a “zero food to landfill” KPI by sending all their food to anaerobic digestion or animal feed, even if much of it was perfectly edible. We therefore recommend setting a KPI such as “edible food saved”.

AA: For organisations with limited budgets, what’s one low-cost action that can deliver results within 90 days, and what numbers would indicate that it’s working?

Clarke: A small budget doesn’t need to be a blocker to preventing edible food from going to waste. In some cases the cost of implementing our “Food Waste Heroes Programme” (whereby surplus edible food is redistributed to members of the local community rather than being thrown away) is offset by the corresponding reduction in waste disposal costs. Alternatively, we offer two redistribution products which enable any organisation with surplus food to sell it at a discount – turning their surplus from a cost line to a revenue stream.