Emerging Leaders Discuss Future with Former US President : Barack Obama Leads Round Table Including Swedish Food Waste App Developers

barack obama food waste karma

Last weekend, Former President Barack Obama and the Obama Foundation invited some of Europe’s emerging leaders, including food waste app co-founders Elsa Bernadotte and Hjalmar Nordegren, for a Round Table discussion in Berlin.

The Swedish developers of the Karma app have created a solution currently enabling 2000 partners in the UK, Sweden, and France, to upload their unsold food in the app and connect them to our members that can rescue it for half the price.

According to the UN, if food waste globally could be represented as its own country, it would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter, behind China and the U.S. The resources needed to produce the food that becomes lost or wasted has a carbon footprint of about 3.3 billion tonnes of CO2.

It has only been two years since launching and Karma have already saved more than 500 tonnes of Co2, equivalent to producing 400 million plastic straws.

The purpose of the Round Table was to discuss the future of Europe and the importance of leadership in creating lasting change.

After the roundtable, Obama held a discussion in the Berlin town hall and talk about how it is up to the young leaders of Europe to choose the path history will be formed. Impressed by Elsa's work, he highlighted her work to make this “the first food waste free generation”.

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we´ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek,” said the former president.

A video of Barack Obama’s speech can be found HERE

Read More

Second Harvest Report: 58% of Canada’s Food Goes to Waste

Nearly 60% of food produced in Canada, amounting to 35.5 million metric tonnes, is lost and wasted annually. Of that, 32% or 11.2 million tonnes is avoidable and edible food and could be redirected, according to a new report.