FoodMesh

FoodMesh started with two photographs. In October 2015 co-founders Jessica and Francisco were sent images of perfectly edible produce headed for disposal — badly forecast orders rejected by their buyers, including a shipping container of avocados that even the composter refused because the little stickers wrecked its machines, so it went to landfill instead. Jessica Regan Pautsch told the TechVancouver stage in January 2017, then presenting as Mesh Food Exchange, that six months of digging into the problem showed it was not a food shortage but a distribution and connection problem: roughly 40 per cent of the food grown is wasted, and food waste accounts for a large share of methane emissions. Her pitch for the platform was 'Tinder meets Priceline for food' — intelligent matchmaking that connects surplus with whoever can use it, routing each load to its highest end use, whether people, animal feed, industry or, last, waste. The company now trades as FoodMesh, works from Vancouver, and publishes cumulative impact figures of 45 million kilograms of food diverted, 70 million meals provided and $250 million in donated value.