Boots: Policy trial with Food Waste Heroes keeping small collections

Our first priority, as always, is to save as much food as possible from going to waste. We've had lots of positive feedback from Boots Food Waste Heroes saying the staff are friendly and helpful and there’s rarely food unrequested. However, we've also received feedback that some Boots collections aren't appealing because they are small collections.

For this reason, Boots Food Waste Heroes have the option to keep up to all the items they collect in small collections (5 items or less).

What do I need to do for these collections?

If you’re collecting 5 items or less, then you can keep as much of that collection as you want. We want to ensure the food is saved and not thrown away! Of course, please do add anything you don’t want to keep to the app in the usual way.

If you decide to keep the food we still need to record how much food is saved, so we can share the impact data with Boots. Please follow the steps below to help us to do this:

1. Take a photograph of the entire food haul you are keeping so you can see all items in 1 shot
2. Add a listing on the app. In this listing please:

a) Select the correct collection slot in the drop-down menu

b) Add the number of items in the quantity section

c) Add the listing title “Boots small collection”

Mark your listing as picked up straightaway. To do this, go to the hamburger menu on the home page (the three lines in the top right-hand corner) > go to “My Listings” > “Someone is collecting this”:

Please note: If you are keeping the whole collection, you can upload your listing without following the usual FWH listing rules. For example, you don't need to show Best Before/Use by dates in the photo or list items on a suitable surface.

How do I know how many items I can keep?

You can keep up to all 5 items. For example if your collection has a total of 5 or less items you can keep up to all 5 items. If your Boots collection has 6 or more items, the 10% allowance policy still applies as detailed here.

How do you define 1 item?

Any individually packaged food item is considered as 1 item. For example, if you receive 5 tuna mayo sandwiches, they count as 5 items.

What is Olio doing to ensure Food Waste Heroes follow the correct process?

We appreciate that this policy isn’t perfect and could lead to Food Waste Heroes taking advantage of the new allowance. Our early analysis shows that only 2% of Boots collection use this ‘Small Collection’ perk. We will continue to monitor closely Food Waste Hero behaviours to decide whether to invest our limited tech resources in making this process more robust.