Investor in shares Founder of food waste app sets her sights on clutter

Do you need a kitchen mixer, a drill, a tent or a raclette machine? Perhaps you have a bread machine, an ice-cream maker or a toastie maker gathering dust?

- Kim Willsher

If the answer to either question is "yes", Lucie Basch has a solution. The French entrepreneur and pioneer of the hugely successful anti-food waste app Too Good To Go is now turning her formidable attention to a different problem: the simultaneous underuse and overconsumption of everyday household objects.

Basch has co-founded an app, named Poppins after the fictional nanny and her carpet bag full of items. The aim is to connect people who have things they don't need with people who might want to borrow or rent them under the slogan: "Own less, have more".

Basch says research has shown the average French person owns around 2.5 tonnes of objects, a third of which are never used. "It doesn't make sense ecologically or economically," she said. "The aim is to allow everyone to find what they need easily and nearby. Collective prosperity is the only way forward."