Creative
Creative
Each year, 40% of all food produced in America never gets eaten. That’s 952 pounds per family. $218 billion in wasted resources. And the single biggest contributor to U.S. landfills.
How do you solve a problem this big?
First, we raised awareness. A short film — The Extraordinary Life and Times of a Strawberry — played in theaters across the country and showed everything that goes into one simple fruit. Then, print and OOH pieces surfaced staggering food waste facts (like the fact that wasting one egg is the same as wasting 55 gallons of water).
Next, we turned that awareness into action – with a series of digital tools and content that helped people fight food waste everywhere it happens.
It happens at the fridge. So we created The Save The Food Alexa Skill, which helped people store food so it lasts longer, tell if it’s still good, and even revive it once it’s past prime.
It happens in the kitchen. So we partnered with world-renowned chef Dan Barber to give people surprise cooking tutorials at their house. And created partner content with Scraps, a TV show dedicated solely to waste-free cooking.
And it happens when people shop. So we built The Guest-imator — a party-planning calculator that tells you exactly how much to buy based on how many people you’re serving.
Then, for everything else, we created Live It: a constantly-updated collection of tools, tips, and organizations from across the country.
It was an ambitious solution to an ambitious problem. But the needle has moved.
The campaign has received over 60 million in donated media, the most ever for an Ad Council campaign. It’s been featured in major publications like the New York Times, TIME Magazine, Mashable, USA Today, NPR, Huffington Post, National Geographic and The Guardian. And now, 54% of Americans list food waste as one of the country’s top three biggest problems.
Even Congress has taken notice, introducing “The Food Recovery Act” earlier this year — a bill with over 12 measures aimed at reducing our food waste problem.
Guessing how much food to make for a dinner party can be a headache. Either you prepare too little food and have hungry guests, or you make too much and end up wasting food. 40% of food in America never gets eaten, and that number only gets worse during the holiday season.
So we created the The Guest-imator: a free online tool that uses a proprietary algorithm to help you figure out how much food to make for your guests. Just tell it who’s coming and what’s for dinner, then it tells you how much to make. It even plans for leftovers.
It also incorporates a little-known food prep secret – the more dishes you prepare, the smaller each one needs to be. Because guests end up sampling multiple things and having less of each. It’s the latest tool from SapientRazorfish, the Ad Council, and Natural Resources Defense Council’s campaign to stop food waste and Save The Food.