Anne Katherine Fiesinger is scrolling through her phone looking for dinner. There are plenty of options on her smartphone. All she has to do is find what she wants and then pick it up on the way home.

“My primary concern is to counter environmental pollution which I try to counter in different ways, and this is the easiest way to do something every day. It’s super simple. You download the app and then I look to see where I can take away something on the way home.”

It’s not just restaurants that are getting in on the action. The “Too Good To Go” app website allows environmentally conscious shoppers to go to markets to pick up food that’s reached its sell-by date would otherwise be tossed away.

“Our portions are always half of the original price. The profile always shows the approximate number of meals the customer can expect, the size of the meal, how many portions are left and at what time the meal can be picked up, always shortly before closing time.”

The idea behind the app is simple, leave no food behind.

“There about million tons we throw away. That is more than 10,000 truckloads. Just imagine that and the amount is the same as stuffing six million tons of CO2. It’s an unbelievable amount. After all, we have important resources in these food stuffs, and if we throw them away, it’s really something that is difficult to justify ethically.”

Saving food means saving energy. There’s less waste to process and less energy needed to grow and ship new food.

“I can say that until now we have saved 14 million meals in Europe and that is equivalent to 35,000 tons of CO2.”

These kinds of programs work particularly well in big cities like Berlin.

“In Berlin, it’s really easy to find something. There’s something waiting for you on every corner.”

The owners of the Too Good To Go website say their app are downloaded by about 5000 Germans each day. That’s a lot of half-price meals.

Kevin Enochs, VOA News.