Olio, the sharing app tackling food and household waste, has revealed the value of the social impact it has created since launching in 2015 has exceeded £1.1 billion, with more than £380 million generated in 2025 alone.

For decades, businesses have measured financial performance. More recently, many have started measuring their environmental impact too. Now social value, the wider benefit a company creates for people and communities, is emerging as a new area organisations are keen to evidence, particularly as it becomes a growing consideration in procurement, ESG reporting and stakeholder expectations.

Olio is best known for helping people share surplus food and household items with their neighbours, work that facilitated £82 million of sharing in 2025 and helped prevent around 70,000 tonnes of CO₂e emissions and 11 billion litres of water from being wasted. But the business increasingly believed its impact went further than waste reduction alone, and set out to quantify that wider value using MeasureUp, an open and publicly available framework for measuring and valuing social outcomes.

The analysis found that the largest contributor to Olio’s social value was improved mental wellbeing, reflecting stronger community connections, reduced financial pressure and a greater sense of purpose. Additional social value was generated through volunteering and increased physical activity due to users walking or cycling to collect and redistribute food and household items.

Among those experiencing that positive impact is Teresa Kemp, a Food Waste Hero from Newcastle. Teresa downloaded Olio in 2020 but didn’t start volunteering until 2024, when a fellow user suggested she sign up herself. She has since completed close to 800 surplus food collections, shared with hundreds of people in her local area, and taken on a Squad Captain role leading two groups of Olio volunteers.

Teresa has faced significant personal challenges in her past, including drug addiction, periods of homelessness and poor mental and physical health. Since becoming a Food Waste Hero with Olio, she has made close friends through the platform, taken on an additional volunteering role at a local second-hand shop, and, with her doctor’s support, reduced her medication as her mental health has improved. All of which she directly attributes to her involvement with the Olio community.

Teresa said: “Before Olio, I didn’t really go out or mix with people much – I was anxious about speaking to new people so I’d just sit in my flat all day. But once I started collecting food, I noticed I felt better. After a few weeks, I started to make friends – people who would go on to become really good friends. We meet up for a brew, chat on WhatsApp, and we’re always there for each other. I’ve also lost close to four stone as I am so much more active than I used to be. It’s been a huge improvement to my health.

“I can genuinely say that volunteering with Olio has changed my life. I’m doing something meaningful, helping others, and I finally feel proud of myself.”

The MeasureUp framework is an open and publicly available assessment tool aligned with HM Treasury’s Green Book, to quantify three social outcomes: improved mental wellbeing, increased physical activity and volunteering. More than 3,000 Olio users completed surveys comparing their wellbeing and activity before and after using the app, with improvements converted into Wellbys – a standard measure of wellbeing-adjusted life improvements – and then into financial values using HM Treasury-approved wellbeing valuation techniques.

These were combined with anonymised platform data to estimate total social value. To avoid overstating impact, Olio adopted deliberately conservative assumptions throughout, including measuring only three outcomes despite recognising additional benefits, segmenting users by engagement level, excluding less-engaged users from key calculations, and taking steps to avoid double-counting social value.

Olio’s approach reflects its wider commitment to putting people and the planet at the heart of business. As a Certified B Corporation and member of the Better Business Act coalition, it is part of a movement working to make social and environmental impact a fundamental part of how businesses operate, measure success and create value.

Tessa Clarke, Co-founder and CEO of Olio, said: “When we started Olio, success was measured in meals shared and carbon emissions prevented. But over the years we realised something even more profound was happening.

People told us they were making friends through Olio, feeling less isolated, becoming more physically active and finding purpose through volunteering. Those stories mattered every bit as much as the environmental impact, but until now we’d never been able to quantify them.

“Businesses have become very good at measuring financial performance and, increasingly, environmental impact. I hope this is the beginning of a much wider movement towards measuring social value too. Because if we’re serious about reimagining the role of business in society, we need to start recognising and rewarding the businesses that create the greatest value for people, not just the greatest returns for shareholders. 

“As a certified B Corp, we’ve always believed businesses should be judged by the value they create for society, not simply the profits they generate. We hope this work encourages many more organisations to start measuring what truly matters. 

The methodology was independently reviewed by sustainability and social impact consultant John Condon – an expert in measuring and governing the environmental and social value businesses create. He said: “I reviewed Olio’s social impact methodology because evidencing the wider value organisations and their ecosystems create for society deserves the same seriousness we give to financial and carbon modelling. 

“Olio has approached this task with genuine rigour, aligning survey results with recognised public frameworks, with results segmented and prudently weighted by how people use their app. Olio made consciously conservative choices throughout. This is a serious, transparent and defensible piece of work, and I’m glad to see it published with its methodology openly set out.”