Cutting down Food Waste with Imperfect Produce

The United States produces a colossal amount of food, but as folks who watched reports like the one aired on Last Week Tonight know, a huge amount of that food winds up decomposing in landfills. While the issue that unsold food goes straight to the dump instead of to hungry people who would gladly eat it is important, there is another aspect of our massive food waste problem that often gets overlooked. Namely, that food which doesn’t look how we expect it to look (apples that aren’t perfectly round, peaches that are a little lopsided, etc.) may not even get sold. While some of this food might be turned into canned fruit, or made into fruit bars, every crop has a big portion that doesn’t measure up to aesthetic standards. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the produce in question, except that it isn’t pretty enough to sell.

That’s where Imperfect Produce delivery service comes into the picture.

Finding A Home For Homely Food

Rather than letting perfectly good food rot on the ground (an estimated 20 percent of all the produce that comes from U.S. farms), Imperfect Produce delivery service partners with local farms to get their goods into the hands of people who will eat it. To do this, the company offers this “ugly” produce at 30 to 50 percent lower prices than what people could buy “pretty” food for at their local grocery stores. The food is shipped right to their door, and buyers have complete control over what they get from week to week.

One service may not be able to place the billions of tons of produce that gets left behind… but it might be the single pebble that begins the avalanche.