One-third of the world's food goes to waste every year. In the US, about 40 percent of our food gets thrown out. It's happening on the farm, at the grocery store and in our own homes. Lately, there's been a lot of talk about what to do about it — from auctioning off food that's past its prime, to getting restaurants to track their waste.
Doug Rauch, the former president of Trader Joe's, is determined to repurpose the perfectly edible produce slightly past its sell-by date that ends up in the trash. (That happens in part because people misinterpret the labels, according to a report out this week from Harvard and the National Resources Defense Council.) To tackle the problem, Rauch is opening a new market early next year in Dorchester, Mass., that will prepare and repackage the food at deeply discounted prices.
The project is called the Daily Table. It's the idea about how to bring affordable nutrition to the underserved in our cities. It basically tries to utilize this 40 percent of this food that is wasted. This is, to a large degree, either excess, overstocked, wholesome food that's thrown out by grocers, etc. ... at the end of the day because of the sell-by dates. Or [it's from] growers that have product that's nutritionally sound, perfectly good, but cosmetically blemished or not quite up for prime time. So we bring this food down into a retail environment where it can become affordable nutrition.
As a matter of fact, if you have a product that says, "sell by Sept. 1" or "Oct. 1" and, you know, it's Oct. 2, most customers don't realize you can eat that.
Doug Rauch, the former president of Trader Joe's, is determined to repurpose the perfectly edible produce slightly past its sell-by date that ends up in the trash. (That happens in part because people misinterpret the labels, according to a report out this week from Harvard and the National Resources Defense Council.) To tackle the problem, Rauch is opening a new market early next year in Dorchester, Mass., that will prepare and repackage the food at deeply discounted prices.
The project is called the Daily Table. It's the idea about how to bring affordable nutrition to the underserved in our cities. It basically tries to utilize this 40 percent of this food that is wasted. This is, to a large degree, either excess, overstocked, wholesome food that's thrown out by grocers, etc. ... at the end of the day because of the sell-by dates. Or [it's from] growers that have product that's nutritionally sound, perfectly good, but cosmetically blemished or not quite up for prime time. So we bring this food down into a retail environment where it can become affordable nutrition.
As a matter of fact, if you have a product that says, "sell by Sept. 1" or "Oct. 1" and, you know, it's Oct. 2, most customers don't realize you can eat that.
