Worried about your food supply during COVID-19? Three experts, including celebrated Chez Panisse chef Alice Waters, share tips for growing your own fruits and vegetables. Like much of the world, I’ve spent the past few weeks glued to my phone—riddled with anxiety, simultaneously bored and busy, desperately wanting to be useful but paralyzed by the vastness of the COVID-19 crisis. Read Full Story

The company generates huge amounts of waste from the parts of the fruit it doesn’t use. In the next five years, it’s hoping to find new ways to repurpose it all. Each year, Dole grows billions of bananas—the world’s most popular fruit—along with other produce. But not all of those billions of bananas end up as food: Some portion of them are lost along the supply chain, wasting energy, money, and nutrients. And the company also generates waste from the parts of the fruit that don’t get eaten. In the next five years, the company plans to eliminate those losses entirely. Read Full Story

Working with food banks, chefs, farmers, and grocery stores, the company has created software to more smartly route excess food where it’s needed and to more accurately figure out which items are getting wasted. Nearly two years ago, researchers from X , the experimental “moonshot factory” at Alphabet, sat down with the head of a food bank in Arizona to begin to better understand one of the conundrums of hunger in the U.S.: As much as 40% of the food supply is wasted, but millions of Americans don’t have enough to eat. During the pandemic, the situation has gotten worse: one in eight adults in the U.S. now say that they’re food insecure . Read Full Story

By offering developing farmers simple technology to preserve their crops and a distribution supply chain, Agricycle creates new markets for farmers. For female farmers growing mangos or pineapples in Kenya or Uganda , one of the main businesses challenges is simply getting food to customers: Without access to refrigerated storage or efficient transportation, food often spoils before it gets to a market. Overproduction is another problem, many tiny farms grow the same crops as neighbors flooding the market at harvest time. A startup called Agricycle is working to build new brands that can save food that would otherwise be lost—and help boost the incomes of rural families living in extreme poverty. Read Full Story

Posted by MiriamEllis “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother's words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world.” — Fred Rogers This quote is one I find myself turning to frequently these days as a local SEO. It calls to mind my irreplaceable neighborhood grocer. On my last essential run to their store, they not only shared a stashed 4-pack of bath tissue with me, but also stocked their market with local distillery-produced hand sanitizer which I was warned will reek of bourbon, but will get the job done. When times are hard, finding helpers comes as such …

The fashion industry is mulling big changes that could impact everything from its carbon footprint to how much things cost. Have you ever thought about how weird it is that department stores start displaying swimwear in March and winter coats in August? For decades, brands have sold clothes months before they’re in season, which doesn’t line up with consumers’ actual needs and contributes to the industry’s tremendous waste. Read Full Story

Company founders sent letter to customers noting that their manufacturing costs had spiked by over 275%. You may recall our glowing review of Petal , the frozen trash can. I tested it, loved it, felt more deep affection than one should feel for a trash can, and grudgingly shipped back the sample model. Then I returned to emptying my food waste more than once every two weeks. Fruit flies reappeared. I counted the days until my new Petal would arrive in January, when preordered models ship. Read Full Story

Food waste from a restaurant or cafeteria could be turned into compostable foodware for those same restaurants or cafeterias. When it ends up in a landfill, food waste is a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions. A Toronto-based startup called Genecis , part of Y Combinator’s latest cohort, turns it into something valuable instead: compostable plastic that can replace plastic made from petroleum. Read Full Story

The company’s new Re.Uniqlo initiative tackles waste by recycling old clothes into fresh items, starting with down jackets. Uniqlo’s affordable down jackets are one of the company’s signature products. But what happens to these coats once they’ve reached the end of their lifecycle? The Japanese mega-retailer is not exactly fast fashion, but the affordability its clothes makes them seem a little more disposable, which is a big problem for the environment. Unwanted clothes end up in landfill and contribute to carbon dioxide emissions. Read Full Story

Cheetah usually gives its expiring food to food banks, but its been inspired by mutual aid projects in New York to also start delivering groceries to a network of street fridges that anyone in need can take advantage of. On a section of Kammerer Avenue in San Jose, California, you’ll find a white refrigerator, adorned with paintings of garlic and carrots by local street artists, sitting right on the sidewalk. Inside, you might find gallons of juice, cartons of eggs, loaves of bread and a drawer full of vegetables all for the taking, at no cost. The fridge was set up by Cheetah, a wholesale grocery delivery startup, as a way to reduce the company’s food waste and give that food directly to Bay Area residents in need. Read Full Story