31/10/19

Tobacco Dock Partners with Alteryx and OLIO to Cut Food Waste

A pioneering approach to catering at Alteryx Inspire Europe 2019.

Tobacco Dock, one of London’s most imaginative and versatile venues, today announced that they have joined forces with OLIO and Alteryx, revolutionising business through data science and analytics, to eliminate food waste at the Alteryx Inspire Europe 2019 event.

The events industry often gets a bad rap for its performance on food waste. No matter how carefully you plan, no matter how hungry the attendees, there’s often food remaining at the end of each event. With stringent health and safety rules meaning that heart-plummeting quantities of delicious food are consigned to the bin, it can be disheartening and frustrating. Following the recent Extinction Rebellion protests, there’s never been a time where sustainability has more relevance.

Sustainability has long been a core focus both for Alteryx and for Tobacco Dock. When the Event Exchange agency team, introduced the idea of using OLIO to the teams, they jumped at the chance. OLIO is a revolutionary app making the sharing of surplus food safe and straightforward, whether through connecting neighbours who have made an extra portion or on a larger, commercial scale.

Working closely alongside the Alteryx and Tobacco Dock Food teams, OLIO managed to save 338 meals over the course of Inspire Europe, benefitting hundreds of residents in the local community. The environmental impact of this represents an equivalent of 612kg of CO2 emissions avoided and over 100,000 litres of water saved as a result of this food being eaten, not thrown away.

“This is something we’ve been working towards for a long time,” said Alex Martindale, Director of Tobacco Dock Food. “I’ve been very pleased with the strides we’ve made in minimising our food waste, but inevitably there are always leftovers. It’s wonderful that we can do something useful with this food and in such an easy way. We will certainly embrace this approach for future events.”

The OLIO team are similarly enthused. “With the climate crisis and sustainability now firmly in the mainstream, delegates are increasingly concerned about the enormous problem of food waste at events, that to date has been unavoidable,” says Tessa Clarke, Co-Founder and CEO of OLIO.  “We’re delighted to have partnered with Alteryx and Tobacco Dock to enable them to have the first of what we hope will be many zero food waste events. They’ve been wonderful partners and true pioneers in the sector”

“We were thrilled to play a part in the effort to eliminate food waste and to give back to the London community during our Inspire Europe conference,” said Tori Adamo, senior manager of Alteryx For Good and university relations at Alteryx. “Alteryx for Good is proud to partner with passionate organizations like Tobacco Dock and Olio, to drive incremental, positive change around the world.”