From The New Daily (6/1/24)…
‘Funny-looking solution’ could be answer to food waste
Many of us enjoy biting into a perfectly glossy apple, or chopping a pleasingly-symmetrical capsicum – but our desire for perfection in fresh produce has an alarming downside.
It creates a huge amount of food waste, with millions of tonnes of fresh fruit and vegetables left to rot on farms simply because they don’t meet big retailers’ cosmetic standards.
Alarm at that waste is driving clever ideas to make better use of Australia’s abundant produce.
A recent addition to the ranks is Offbeat Harvest. Founder Alex Dask said he was inspired after learning how much of an issue food waste is in Australia.
Food rescue charity OzHarvest says Australia wastes more than 7.6 million tonnes of food every year. More than 2.5 million tonnes of that is from farms and primary producers.
Half of all fresh produce never even gets off the farm where it is grown because one of the key reasons for dumping it is that it doesn’t meet supermarket standards.
