Waste Less

March 13, 2026

Candace Dipsey

En Espanol

Smiling boy in a blue soccer jersey stands inside a bagel shop holding a brown paper bag and showing a phone screen. — DREW WILLIS FOR TIME FOR KIDS

Stale pastries. Spoiled snacks. Forgotten leftovers. More than 80 billion pounds of food ends up in the trash each year. That’s according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Some is from homes. Some is surplus food. That’s food that stores and restaurants are unable to sell.

A lot of this waste is preventable. Too Good To Go wants to help.

Green reusable bags labeled “Too Good To Go” filled with fresh foods, including bread, vegetables, and juice.

COURTESY TOO GOOD TO GO

Good Idea

Too Good To Go is a marketplace for surplus food. It’s the world’s biggest. It aims is to keep food out of the trash.

The company connects people and businesses. It does so through an app. Users can search its map. They’ll find participating shops nearby. Businesses offer surprise bags or boxes of surplus food. These can contain anything from pizza to produce. The boxes are offered at a low price. Users claim and pay for a bag or box. They pick it up before the business closes for the day.

Boy in a blue soccer jersey uses his phone to order food at a counter inside a bagel shop.

TFK Kid Reporter Axel Foster shows his Too Good To Go order to a bagel shop employee in Brooklyn, New York.

DREW WILLIS FOR TIME FOR KIDS

The app has more than 100 million users worldwide. Chris MacAulay is its vice president of operations in North America. His vision is to help end food waste. The more bags sold, “the more that we’ve achieved our vision,” he says.

Shop employee hands a paper bag of bagels to a boy in a blue soccer jersey standing at the counter.

The employee hands Axel his bag. It’s filled with a variety of surplus bagels.

DREW WILLIS FOR TIME FOR KIDS

Start at Home

How can kids reduce food waste? “Participate in understanding how food ends up on the plate,” MacAulay says. This can mean going grocery shopping with the family. It can mean being more thoughtful about portions. Once you notice the amount of waste, “it’s really hard to unsee,” MacAulay says.