In Bold: Saasha Celestial-One
“If you took the food surplus in the US and UK, you could feed every single hungry person in the world,” explains Saasha Celestial-One. “We have way more than enough food to go around. But what we’re also seeing is increases in food waste and food poverty happening at the same time. So how do we start to reverse that?”
It's a challenge that Saasha and her co-founder Tessa Clarke decided to tackle head on when they created Olio, an app to facilitate the sharing of surplus food and household items amongst local communities.
Combining the lessons she learned growing up in rural America with the skills that saw her forge a successful corporate career has led Saasha to make some bold decisions – and find some bold solutions. But how did she get from childhood lemonade stands to co-creating an app that is making millions of people reconsider their household waste and connect with those around them?
We caught up with Saasha to find out. Here’s her story.
Growing bold
“I had quite an alternative upbringing,” Saasha shares. “I grew up in Iowa and my family were farmers – except for my parents. They became part of the hippie movement and went on to start their own natural food store.”
“We struggled financially and so there were always a million side hustles going on,” she remembers. “I had so many different little businesses as a kid. I sold candy, braided people's hair, made grape juice and lemon juice and sold it at our own mini stall.”
However, it wasn’t just entrepreneurialism that Saasha learned as a child. Her family also taught her the importance of a more circular way of life; “It was very much instilled in me the idea that waste is bad, and that unchecked consumerism is not desirable. Although at the time it wasn’t environmental in its nature – it was more a case of frugality.”
“After quite a chaotic childhood, I spent a few decades in the pursuit of ‘normal’ and found my way in the corporate world,” says Saasha. “But eventually I reached a point where I felt I had enough financial security that I didn't need to keep sort of pursuing a corporate career at all costs.”
And so Saasha made a change.
Taking bold steps
When the company she was working for did a reorganisation, Saasha saw her chance to step off the corporate ladder; “I took my redundancy package and used the money to give myself two years to figure out what I wanted to do. I opened a creche where you could drop your kids off as and when you needed - it was profitable within six months. The process of bringing that business to life was one of the most joyous things I'd done since in my whole professional career.”
“It was through that business that I met Tessa, my Olio co-founder. We were both new moms and said to each other that we wanted to make the world a better place for our children. So, we started looking for a problem that we could solve,” Saasha recalls.
The duo stumbled across a problem close to home when Tessa found herself unable to give away unwanted food during a house move. Within an hour, they’d agreed to launch Olio.
“Olio is a hyper local platform to facilitate the sharing of surplus food and household items, and our mission is to solve the climate crisis by ending waste one share at a time,” explains Saasha. “Trillions of small actions got us to where we are with the climate emergency, and we believe small actions can help turn things around.”
Bold, but bigger
Although Olio represents the power of small actions, its impact, and its usage, is significant – with the app now being used by millions worldwide.
“The pandemic was a tipping point for Olio,” Saasha says. “We saw as much sharing in terms of transactional activity in the first five months of the pandemic than we had for the first five years. Things could have gone either way for neighbour-to-neighbour sharing app during that time, but what we saw as a huge increase in consideration for other people’s needs.”
At a time of extreme isolation, it was community that Olio provided – and it’s community that Saasha believes is not only the key to Olio’s success, but the key to wider change too; “There’s only so much that educating people about the problem of food waste can do. What really changes consumer behaviour is community and connection.”
“As humans we're hardwired to feel good when we give something of value to someone else,” says Saasha. “And we should be hardwired as well to feel pretty rubbish when we throw something of value away, but we've just lost touch with a lot of that. Olio can make that connection, while addressing food poverty, sustainability, social isolation and wellbeing.”
“It was very much instilled in me the idea that waste is bad. Although at the time that wasn’t environmental in its nature – it was a case of frugality.”
“We wanted to make the world a better place for our children. So, we started looking for a problem that we could solve.”
“There’s only so much that educating people can do. What really changes consumer behaviour is community and connection.”
Fueling bold
For Saasha, the motivation to continue to grow Olio can be found in the app itself; “The individual stories of the people who benefit from Olio motivate me. We have thousands of stories. If I’m ever feeling blue, I will go to the forum section in the app and read them to see how the kindness of [our users] has impacted so many lives.”
Although Saasha spent some time trying to balance her alternative upbringing with a somewhat less-alternative corporate career, she can see how her childhood led her where she is now; “I always think it’s funny how I’ve come full circle from my childhood to what I do with Olio. My mom was an absolute scavenger. She knew how to hunt out and find things that other people have thrown away and fix them up - and I spent a lot of time helping her. And here I am solving a problem that my mom had figured out how to solve on her own 30 years ago.”
“I think one thing both my parents did really well was to instil a sense of confidence in me. I don't really have a negative voice in my head,” says Saasha. “That doesn’t mean I haven’t suffered from trauma or painful circumstances, but it means I can be outside my comfort zone and also feel confident that I can handle just about anything.”
A bold future
Combining her experience of working in large corporates and building Olio, Saasha reflects on the role large organisations can play in building a better future for the planet; “I think the bigger the business, the greater the duty to set public targets and be transparent in terms of how you go about achieving them. Big businesses should aim higher than standard goals for net zero or sustainability. They set the pace for the rest of the industry.”
As for Olio’s future – what’s next? “We’re really focused on making Olio more useful to more people so that we become the destination for anything to do with hyper local, sustainability or money saving,” says Saasha. “We recently launched our event section, which is where you can share virtual events or local events – it’s like the community notice board. It’s another way to further embed us at the heart of local communities.”
And Saasha’s advice to those of us wanting to do something bold?
“When you’re trying to do something too bold, it can feel really intimidating and it can make you not do anything at all,” says Saasha. “So, break it down into the smallest possible step forward that doesn't make you want to procrastinate. The sense of satisfaction you'll get from doing that one thing will prompt you to do the next thing and the next thing and next thing. Eventually, it will lead to something bold.”
Thanks for reading
We hope you feel inspired by Saasha’s story. It’s an important reminder of that small actions can have in restoring both the wellbeing of our planet and the people on it.
“There’s only so much that educating people can do. What really changes consumer behaviour is community and connection.”
“It’s funny how I’ve come full circle from my childhood to Olio. I’m solving a problem that my mom had figured out how to solve on 30 years ago.”
