Promoter organisation: Refood and Fruta Feia (Ugly Fruit)
Country: Portugal
What:
Fruta Feia Co-operative arises from the need to overturn the standardization trends regarding food, which have nothing to do with its’ quality and safety. This project aims to fight the market inefficiency by changing consumption patterns and creating an alternative market to “ugly” fruits and vegetables. A market that values farmers and consumers, and that can prevent food waste as well as the unnecessary use of resources to their production.
The cooperative Fruta Feia (“ugly fruit” in Portoguese) has been preventing the waste of so-called “ugly” fruit in Portugal. This refers to fruit (and vegetables) that are not usually sold in markets because their colour, shape or size does not meet perceived customer preferences. As a result, farmers cannot sell the produce and it goes to waste.
What if Porto prevented 50% of all edible food waste?
How:
Just under 14,000 tonnes of food are wasted in the Municipality of Porto every year,101 with only a fraction of this waste currently being valorised. However, both Porto itself as well as the Porto Metropolitan Area (PMA) have ongoing initiatives, such as Refood and Fruta Feia (Ugly Fruit) Cooperative, to combat this. Refood works to divert edible food waste from landfill by redistributing it, while Fruta Feia ensures that imperfect fruits and vegetables are eaten by effectively marketing products that producers find hard to sell. Currently, donations to food banks alone account for 13% of edible food waste in the Municipality of Porto. Preventing food waste not only helps bring food to those in need, but also reduces the amount of food and food waste that is produced, lessening the negative impacts stemming from food production and food waste processing.
When: Since 2013
Why it is relevant:
- Attempts to tackle the issue of unnecessary use of resources during the production of all this wasted food (soil, energy, water)
- Attempts to reduce the emission of carbon dioxin and methane resulting from the decomposition of food that is not eaten
- Attempts to address ethical issues that has to do with food waste
- Attempts to fight the current market inefficiency by changing consumption patterns and creating an alternative market to “ugly” fruits and vegetables.
Target Groups:
All citizens/consumers, producers
RESULTS OF THE GOOD PRACTICE
- Every week, each delivery point has an average of 300 consumers and saves around 1,5 tonnes of fruit and vegetables from being wasted.
- To date, the initiative works with 275 producers, 12 delivery points and 6530 consumers
- The initiative estimates that it has prevented a total of 2725 tonnes of food from being wasted.