If you’ve been keeping up to date with our articles, you will have seen last week’s post on our new eco-friendly initiative: Lunch for Trees. It’s all about how we’re helping the environment, by working with the Million Trees Project to get more trees planted in Ningxia. Of course, we’re thankfully not the only ones out there working to protect our planet – here’s a look at some other food companies around the world who are doing their bit too.

Image by Rubies in the Rubble via Facebook

Rubies in the Rubble

Picture this: you head down to your local fruit and veg market. You have a choice between a perfectly-formed shiny apple, or one that’s a bit bruised and not that ideal shade of red. The odds are that bruised one is being left at the market – as are thousands of other items that don’t match our (or supermarkets’) high aesthetic expectations for the food. This results in a massive surplus in food destined for landfill. Rubies take some of this surplus food, and adds with a bit of experimentation creates chutneys, jams and sauces. The result is delicious and quirky condiments – like pink onion and chilli relish or banana ketchup – which prolong shelf-life of those fruits and veggies that would’ve gone to waste.

Image by Flawsome via Facebook

Flawsome

Back to those poor misshapen apples again – the UK alone throws away four million apples every day. Flawsome rescues ‘imperfect’ apples and other wonky fruits, and turns them into cold-pressed juices. The bottles – of course, made from 100% recycled glass– tells you how many fruits you’ve saved by drinking one of Flawsome’s juices, so you’ll get a healthy dose of clear conscience with your vitamins.

Image by Too Good To Go via Facebook

Too Good To Go

It’s not just wonky fruits, and ugly vegetables that go to waste – perfectly pretty restaurant-quality food gets chucked out at the end of the day too. The Too Good To Go app works with restaurants all over Europe to help food left on restaurant shelves be rescued. Usually, after the working lunch rush or after dinner, app users can choose a restaurant nearby which has unsold food leftover and pick up a surprise meal or snack for a fraction of the price it would’ve usually cost. It’s a win for restaurants not having to throw away food they’ve spent time cooking, a win for users who get a cheap meal, and most importantly, a win for wasted food.

Image by Scraps via Facebook

Scraps

Here’s a couple of fun facts, courtesy of Scraps: peppers can grow multi-coloured, and you can eat the leaves that grow on broccoli. OK, they might not be that fun, but the fact of the matter is that these perfectly-edible peppers and broccoli leaves are being left in fields or thrown out, because of how they look or are perceived. Scrapstake these ingredients and turns them into nutritious sauces for their frozen pizzas.

Image by Toast

Toast

If you’ve ordered a sandwich from a restaurant ever or picked one up from the shop, you might have noticed you never get one made with the end of a loaf of bread. Bakeriesoverproduce, restaurants and consumers overstock, and a lot of bread gets wasted. Toast have already rescued one million slices of the stuff – to put it in perspective, that’s 1.5x the size of Everest. Toast turn this leftover bread into beer, by substituting it in for part of the grains required for brewing. They create pale ales and lagers and have collaborated with plenty of other breweries to make unique beers, brewed with surplus bread.