Fighting Waste With Ugly Food

Upgrading the food system

This “ugly” produce might have ended up in a landfill. Instead, it went to Hungry Harvest. A company combating food waste by shipping it to consumers at a discount. The Franciscan Center receives donations — including from Hungry Harvest to feed hundreds of people at their community kitchen. Evan Lutz. Evan Lutz is a 26 -year-old social entrepreneur from Baltimore, Maryland who is passionate about food justice, entrepreneurship, and the Baltimore Ravens.

All of these vegetables are maybe abused from supermarkets, but they are perfect for us. ‘Cause feeding 500 people is a daunting task, but everything here you’ll see will go to use. Food waste is one of the largest contributors to climate change. If it were a country — if food waste were a country — it would be the third largest contributor to climate change behind the United States and China. And the thing is though, waste is very preventable and solvable issue. We are in Jessup, Maryland produce terminal. The Hungry Harvest warehouses. I started way back in 2014, about five and a half years ago, and I started with just farm stands selling one farmer's surplus ** produce to college students at the University of Maryland. It's blossomed into Hungry Harvest, where we prevent about 18 million pounds of produce from going to waste,” Evan Lutz, CEO, Hungry Harvest tells Brut.

Lutz procures his produce from farms, packing houses, wholesalers and sells them in subscription boxes, community markets "Produce in a SNAP", and donations to food banks and community kitchens. In working toward the mission of reducing food waste, Lutz sees room to create more efficiency and for the companies to potentially work together. At the same time, he said, “there’s plenty of room in the market for a few companies to compete and build successful businesses.”

Brut.