Hey, Tiffany. HELLO, CAT. Welcome back to greening up my act. Thank you. I hope everyone had a good week off because it's we're recording this one. Exactly right after we recorded last week's when we were talking about the mill quote unquote composting. So we're, we're on a roll and we're just going to keep rolling into this next section, but I guess we should introduce ourselves. Yeah, well, and this comes out September 5, so hopefully you have less heat. Yeah, here. Yeah, I hope I've there's no in inside. They're actually keeping pools open later this year through October 1, because the heat wave has no end in sight. So yeah. And we keep having heat emergency like heat, excessive heat warning stuff. And the city has to keep cooling centers open, which is really important, but it's like really terrifying. Because there's no escape. You know, that's really scary. Yeah. And you said your AC went out, right? Yeah. My it overheated last night. Oh, my God. Yesterday afternoon sometime. And I think because we had to have or Sunday night we had to have a guy come and look at it yesterday, and I was so scared that it was gonna be out. I was gonna have to buy a new H back but it just, it just overheated. Nice. Okay. Well, that's, I mean, that's a blessing. Yeah. As a homeowner, that's it. Yes, blessing, but it's just going to happen again, because it's 107 degrees every day this week. I'll go put an umbrella out there and give it some shade. I don't know. You know, like, how do you Yeah, the air conditioner. Well, hopefully by September 5, you're better. At least a little less daylight and nothing else. But yeah, that's why we do this though. This is we right? It's like a perfect re on. Yeah, it's too late, y'all, but it's not too late. We are looking at ways to create a sustainable lifestyle that reduces our individual impact and hopefully influences corporations to do their part to reduce emissions and other things that are causing global climate change. And yeah, and not only it's not like a fake sustainable lifestyle, like most of us, like we don't even know we're doing most of the time, I think because so much more thing is out there. That is as we call it green Hui, it tells you this is a good product to choose when it's really just more expensive and less effective and doesn't actually do anything to mitigate the you know, carbon emissions or waste that it creates or water it wastes or chemicals that use it right or or people it impacts like, yeah, waterways it pollutes or you know, things like that. So yeah, and we are marketing writers. So we spent our days writing silly words. No. I don't think either of us markets unsustainable products. No, no, no. Our mapping words are for the good. But yeah, yeah. We Yeah, we try not to be evil, but that's one goal. But you know, we're really good at seeing through other people's verbiage. Yep. My garbage, verbal garbage. Is it verbiage or verbiage, either I think it's spelled verbiage but it's it's meant to be verbal garbage is what it stands for. I had no idea okay. Yeah. Learn something new. Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, and then we rate we go through systems or products or services and write them on a scale of one to five granolas because what else would you do is eco friendly warriors you want to be hippies and five is a crunchy crunchy crunchy crunchy. Good. The crunchy granola, which is breaker twos off, and a one is soggy. Yep. And that's you don't want soggy granola. We have had a sodden granola before. Oh, no. Wait, it was Waterlogue. waterlogged. Yes. I'm sorry. I keep saying sodden. Because I'm like, it's worse than soggy, but it is waterlogged. Yes. So we've had one of those, but most things tend to fall in the three, right? Yeah, it depends. Yeah, it really depends. But there's a lot of we, our goal is to find that really good stuff. Yeah, we can tell people like yeah, do this. Like for example. plastic forks, like, those are the one reusable item that you should well, you should avoid plastic forks and just carry around a fork and yeah, like actually doing some good. That was amazing to find out. Yeah, just keep a fork in your purse. I haven't if you missed that episode, we chatted about reusable stuff a couple episodes back so yeah, look for that. It's worth it. Or just keep a mug it works. You don't use a paper cup every time you get a coffee. Yeah, and we kind of tried to examine like, what are Individual impact is and then more like, like Cat said, like company wide, like what can companies do? And how can we hold them more accountable? Because that's really where the impact is going to be biggest. Yeah. 100% Well, and then the So this week's episode last week, we talked about compost, but more specifically a brand called the mill home composting system, which is an actually composted the mill kitchen bin kitchen bin that sort of goes, yeah, that and you can't talk about composting without talking about food waste, and you can't talk about food waste without talking about composting. So these two episodes probably will be really good listened to back to back. I'm just gonna say, Yeah, well, I'm going to start with my sources in no particular order. An article from the Atlantic about expiration dates are meaningless. A company called recycled track systems had a blog on food waste in America, Feeding America, which is the largest network of food banks in the United States had. I got stats on hunger in America from them. Reuters had an article Harvard study finds food expiration labels are misleading. A company called Green biz said why is composting so hard in the United States? Project drawdown had an article about reduced food waste? I love them? Yes, they're great. Yeah, they're really great. The soloists group had an article on restaurant composting and the shift toward zero waste food service. Berkeley Economic Review had The Good, the Bad and the Ugly produce movement. And the New Republic had does your box of ugly produce really helped the planet or hurt it? And then of course, I had to the two biggest ugly food companies are imperfect foods. They're imperfect. foods.com and hungry for harvest is at Hungry Harvest that net? Yeah, I get both of those on Instagram. Yeah. Well, I don't Did we mention we're talking about food waste, but we're specifically focusing on your your ugly food, right? I'm focusing on the ugly food movement. Okay. I'm so excited about that, because I know nothing about it. And I've always been so curious as to the details. Okay. So I'm real pumped. Well, good. Okay. Well, so you talked last week about how the issue with food waste is at the source. Food waste happens at the source, right? It's that composting. Who cares about composting if people are just throwing away so much food, right? According to recycled track systems, and they're okay. They're a waste management company whose goal is a world without waste, which I like, but then they would put themselves out of business. It's fine. Yeah, well, well, maybe not. I know. They're because they're, again, they're just trying to create a closed loop. Okay. It's not really a world without waste. It's a world without stuff in land. I gotcha. Basically. Yeah. So Americans waste nearly 60 million tons of food each year. 60 60 million tons. Yeah, that adds up to about 50% of the entire US food supply. Almost half say 50 50%. Almost half. Yep. And that's 325 pounds per person every year. Oh, my God. That's more than twice what I weigh. You know? My hand is up to my face. Yeah, shame. aghast. Yeah. But it's also you know, that's $218 billion worth of food just right down the drain. Oh, my God, if you want to talk about excessive lifestyles, Americans lead lead the world in this by the way to break it down. RTS says that 43% of food waste is directly from individual consumers. So this is definitely a place where individual consumers have the most impact. You said 43% 43%? Damn, yeah, we have a lot of impact on that. And after that, 40% is from business to consumer stuff. So that's grocery stores, restaurants or food service companies. Okay. So they're throwing out 25 million tons. And a lot of that is ugly food. Okay, right. They say, Okay, we'll get into that, or no answer that 16% from farms again, that is food that is left unpicked, or that they couldn't sell. Okay, and then 2% for manufacturers who have produced too much food and don't sell it. Okay, so that's interesting. So they're not really doing as bad as like, the manufacturers aren't doing as bad as well. Yeah. And then thinking about that, like clan food or jarred food or stuff, you know, that just expires before it's sold, I think, right? Okay. So overall food wastes makes up 22% of municipal solid waste. So that's direct to our landfills. You know, we talked about 20% and 22. Corridor. Yeah. And that's, that's not composted? Right. That could be composted. Yeah. Right. So that's the tragedy of that, you know? Yeah. And we talked about why composting is better last week, because it if there's oxygen, methane is not produced. If there's no oxygen like in a landfill. Methane is produced. Yeah. So we don't want it in landfills. So Don't do that. Again. That's project drawdown. So that accounts for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Now, RTS was the one that said that was 11%. Oh, right. Right, right. Yeah. But I don't know why they're different. And Berkeley Economic Review says that according to the UN, if food waste itself was a country, it would be the third largest global emitter of greenhouse gases. So it's like us, China. Food waste. You know, my food waste Island. Holy shit. Yeah, stains. Yeah, insane. Bad News Bears, Bad News Bears. So this is a real frickin issue. Okay, if you care about the environment at all, food waste is a big, big issue. The New Republic reports that every year 30 million acres of cropland 4.2 trillion gallons of water and nearly 2 billion pounds of fertilizer are used to grow food that's never eaten. When according then That's according to a recent study. The latter is particularly concerning since nitrogen based fertilizer is a major cause of water contamination and a significant emitter of greenhouse gases. So it's not just that the waste itself is ending up in the landfill. It's what creates the waste that is causing the problem, which is another thing we found with fast fashion, right? It's not just that you're getting a quick $5 shirt from Target and then throwing it away after wearing it once. It's also that the amount of work it takes to produce that is causing problems in the front end. So yeah, it's it's a candle on both ends. That's very bad. Wow. So why do Americans throw out so much food? This is interesting. I don't I don't think anybody can pinpoint this directly. But okay. 34 million Americans, including 9 million children are food insecure, according to Feeding America. So that means that that's people who have a hard time getting three square meals a day. Right? So that's a lot of people. That's that is a lot. 10% Although, in America, food is plentiful and inexpensive compared to other countries. Okay, I know inflation sucks right now. And eggs are $9. You know, a does. A few weeks ago, I just posted. I just posted this on Instagram, I saw a jar of pasta sauce for like $7 $16. Was it handmade by somebody's Nona? Like it shouldn't. It had to have been they had to fly Nona over to New York. So they flew her over. I don't know. I was like, What in God's world are you living? It's insane. Yeah, I'm with shortages and stuff. Food is really expensive. But really, and this is something that my I remember in high school, when we had exchange students from Europe, they were like, food is so cheap in the US. It's so cheap. So we take it for granted. Yeah. But we produce most of our own food is one of the things I mean, yeah, you're getting you're out of season. Oranges from South America, you know, but we do produce a lot of our own food here. We're pretty self sufficient. Yeah, I mean, we have a lot of land to do it. Yeah. Yes. Number one, we just take it for granted. Because it's cheap. It's 60 cents to buy a head of broccoli, and I don't care about throwing away 60 cents worth of food, right? is cheap. Four out of five. Okay, now this is the other thing. Four out of five Americans will throw away perfectly good food because it's past its quote unquote sell buy or Best Buy date. Okay, so yeah, okay. We're afraid of food poisoning. For sure. That can mean a totally bad weekend. But most who that says it's past its expiration date is totally okay to eat. Okay, well, not expiration date, I should say sell buy or use by date, best date. Okay. That's something we'll talk about again. Okay. Now, according to the Atlantic, the problem is that most expiration dates convey only information about an item's quality, with the exception of infant formula, where they really do refer to expiration dates generally represent a manufacturer or producers best estimate of how long food is optimally fresh and tasty. Although what this actually means varies widely, not least because there's no federal oversight over labeling. What? Yep, they just make a guess. Ah, I had no idea. And it could be vastly different. For instance, I think I read that a gallon of milk sold in Wyoming can be sold 10 days later than it can be in Montana or vice versa, even though like just because they just have different regulations about use by an expired date. It's a it's not a science. It's not so wait. It's not federally regulated, but the states are the some states do. Yeah. Okay. But it's really just up to the manufacturer for them to get them. How long is it going to take for this broccoli to rot? Quit looking at yourself, especially sell by dates. That's just to move to make you feel like you've got to buy it now. You know, but I do find some pretty good deals on meat. Yes. On their sell by dates. Yes. And it's always been good for me. It's perfectly fine. Yeah. Okay. That's, we'll get more into that. Yeah. Okay. Now, the other thing about food waste is we just don't compost, which is what we talked about last week, composting would be so much better. This is partly because there just aren't systems in the US systems in place in the US to compost in the first place. It's just not easy, right? Not everywhere. That's not sure. Yeah, according to GreenBiz, we don't have funding for it. We don't have facilities to send compost to in the first place. We don't know how to fix contamination problems, meaning we don't know how to like, pull out the little bit of oil that got on the one thing that's, you know, and we don't have any data on it. Nobody really knows about who's composting what and where we just, we just don't, we just don't care. Interesting. But also, when they try to introduce composting programs, Americans just don't participate. So they tried, they did a pilot program in New York, and they were all about it. And only 10% of people in New York City participated. When offered. Oh, that's interesting. So was it like a pilot for pickup? Yeah. Okay. You municipal like you have a third Ben? You have your and your Yeah, it was a city. Yeah. Anyway, I wonder if people are just like, I don't want to slosh. My? I don't want to soup. Soup down 18. Stairs, or 18 flights of stairs? I don't know. I mean, it is it is gross. We talked about this last week. It's gross to keep you know, they have all these recommendations on our Austin resource recovery website about how you can keep chicken bones and stuff in your freezer until you're ready to take the compost curb. Which makes sense. But yeah, it's a it's an extra step. And it's not getting your garbage out of sight out of mind. The way we all want it to be right. Yeah, hard. It's frickin hard. I personally think people are a little afraid of composting. And I think that because I was well, yeah, it's kind of magic. Yeah, it's a little it's intimidating to I feel like there's a lot of like people who do compost can can be kind of gatekeeping weighty. Yes, yes. Yes, exactly. It's true. Because it is it's like, well, this works for me. Yeah, there's like kind of alive who reels and totally, yeah, totally. The green badge. Yeah. And so now that I'm home composting, I'm 100% gonna do that to other people. Oh, yeah. Like, compost. Why not? Oh, good. I was so sad for you. Anyway, okay. Okay. So the other thing is restaurants don't compost either. Okay. Yeah, it's a little shocking to me. So according to the soulless group, in 2018, the National Restaurant Association reported that only 14% of restaurants composted any food waste, and I think about that. I know maybe two places that I can think of that I frequent with any regularity. Not that I can afford to eat out anymore, but that have a compost section in there. You know, when you've got to throw out your food? Oh, yeah. It's very rare that they have a composting. You know, yeah. I don't really blame them for not doing that. Because I feel like people would just throw their trash in it. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like in the alley, you there might be a way I tried to convince this coffee shop that I worked at to compost for a while and he was not feeling it. So I mean, at least a coffee grounds. You know, that's what it was. Yeah. And the auditor, he was like, It's too messy. I don't wanna deal with it. So. And that's exactly it. It's too messy. Which is why we come up with food hydrators or dehydrators. Kitchens, kitchens, yep. Okay, so what's a girl to do? Okay, and incomes the ugly food movement, right? If you're on social media at all, like me, you've probably seen ads for imperfect produce Hungry Harvest or other ugly quote unquote, produce boxes? Yes. So they send supposedly unsellable produce that farms or manufacturers are just gonna throw away to your door every month. This is the 16% or 20 billion pounds of produce that gets thrown away every year from pounds from farms. Okay. They say. Okay, critiques. I don't know if I talked enough about what they do to make it worth just diving into the critiques. But so they suck. And here's why. Well, here's the thing. The new food economy, which is like a group of charities that focus on on food waste, they say the issue with these boxes is that they can modify and gentrify food waste, right. So that the food that goes into ugly produce boxes really isn't going to go into landfills in the first place. Usually, that stuff is turned into other food. So stuff that they can't put on the shelf because it's bruised or too ugly. Like a bruised Apple is turned into applesauce. That's what I was just thinking. Yeah, shredded carrots. Where do you think they come from? Where do you think baby carrots come from? Ugly carrots. I always I wondered about that ketchup tomato pie. used diced tomatoes anything canned? That's kind of a mush. You know, it's ugly food. Now, another issue that they bring up is that a lot of these crops often get donated to food banks. Okay, so they're basically taking it out of the mouths of the poor is what they're saying, wow. The other thing is that ugly food can get sold to restaurants because they don't care what it looks like if they're just going to chop it up and make it into a puree anyway, right? Right. So that's cheaper food for restaurants to get. It's also a lot of this quote, unquote, ugly food. And this kind of ticked me off a little bit, but it's sold at a lower for a lower price to grocery stores in lower income neighborhoods, or neighborhoods, where again, it can be sold for less. So poor people deserve ugly food, I guess it's kind of, you know, which, when it comes down to it, who cares what it looks like, you know, the nutritional value of a carrot isn't based on how it's shaped like, Okay, we should all quit being so frickin bougie about how our food looks? Yeah. And I was gonna say one problem I could see is if somebody is hesitant to, I'm just thinking of kids really? Like if a kid is like, oh, that's carrots. Weird. I don't know. Well, you chop it up. Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, and maybe you just teach the kid. You can't judge a book by its cover? Yeah, exactly. Maybe there's a teachable moment. Not all food has to be Instagrammable mm. But another pro tip, if you go to a lower income neighborhood, the produce will be cheaper. It'll look uglier. There is some concern. I remember, a couple of years ago, when I lived in New Jersey, there was someone who pointed out that produce and okay, we lived in kind of the place where we lived in New Jersey was split between like super, super wealthy $3 million homes. And then like, just down the street was a much lower income neighborhood. And the difference between the grocery store on like, they were a mile apart, there was a whole foods at the top of the hill and like a pathway or whatever, at the bottom of the hill. And the purpose of the pathway was uglier. And not in his good condition. It was cheaper. But, you know, it's kind of it always gave me the AIC you know? Why? Yeah. Like, why, yeah, why? How does Yeah, which people deserve fresher food? What are these systems? Yeah, well, that like one of the somebody wrote an article about it, and one of the local papers, and she said, you know, at Whole Foods, all of the asparagus is stored in in water, standing upright and water at the pathway. It's not, it's just kind of, you know, wilting sort of like, yeah, I don't know. It's, why do poor people deserve less fresh food? But yeah, they don't. But at the same time, affordable food is more if there are 34 million Americans suffering from food insecurity. fordable. Food Matters. So Right. It's more concerning that these food boxes would be taking donated food away from food banks. I truly never would have thought I would. Yeah, that's, that's really interesting. I have done a lot of work with food banks, I've there would have, I don't think they should exist. Because I think that we live in the richest country in the world and why they're hungry, especially children. Are you kidding me? Hungry seniors and children, like we had a social welfare network until the 80s. And, you know, big capitalist government got rid of it. And that's when food banks came about this in the 1980s. We didn't have them before then. Whoa, I didn't know that. Yeah, that because we had a welfare system that actually took care of people. So anyway, food bank should not exist, in my opinion, but they do such important work, just getting food to people who don't have access to it. Anyway, donate to your local food bank. I'll get into that in a minute. Anyway, okay. So I was gonna ask, but go. Okay, so the bottom line, the biggest critique is instead of handling food waste, they're handling food surplus. Okay. This means they're incentivizing farmers to keep producing excess food, especially big agriculture. Hmm. They may be taking food away from food banks, or even grocery stores in lower income neighborhoods where it can be sold at a lower price, you know, there are getting taking food out of the mouths of lower income people or people who can't afford it. So those are some pretty big critiques. Also, somebody pointed out in the Berkeley Economic Review, one of the food scientists pointed out that a lot of the food that's wasted by farms isn't wasted because it was picked and determined to be ugly, it's wasted because there is a labor shortage because of our immigration policies. So the food just isn't picked, especially in big agricultural farms. It's just laid out to waste because nobody's picking it. Okay, so ugly food box isn't going to solve that problem. Yeah, that's an immigration policy issue. And, uh, you know, farm labor union issue, that's so much, you know, labor issue, huge, huge other problem. Now another issue that people have with the ugly food improvement is they may be taking money away from CSAs. So community supported agriculture, which we've talked about now. CSAs are really good for farm waste, because they're small scale farms. And the way that most of them work is you have a subscription from stakeholders who pay in advance. The Farm knows what its membership sizes and plants crops accordingly. So it doesn't grow excess food. It knows exactly who it's going to, you know? Okay, so the samples are happy because part of my see Yes, exactly. It's it's a much more sustainable, it's local. The farmer is also financially protected in that sense, because if a, you know, crop fails, okay, sure. The stake stakeholders, I mean, members have taken on a little bit of the risk. So you might not get as much arugula this year as last year, but the farmer is not completely out of money because they put all their money into arugula for you know, 2 million people and they didn't have a crop. So Right. Yeah, we got we get all the zucchini. Yeah, and then nothing else. Yeah, I think we had months of months of just like, potatoes. Yeah, we had problem potatoes, y'all. Like, here's some potato recipes. Exactly. zucchini bread up the wazoo. Yeah. Imperfect foods and hungry harvests, which are the two biggest ones have advertised themselves as CSA style boxes. Oh, I don't know, which undercuts CSAs without addressing why CSAs exist in the first place, right? They're not really Community Supported Agriculture. They're trying to mitigate food waste, different products, they're, you know, so anyway, however, okay, so in their defense, imperfect produce claims, they save 30 million pounds of food and 900 million gallons of water from being wasted every year. When asked, you know, why do you work with big ag? So one of the issues that came up was that if they get ugly produce from big factory farms, they are incentivizing the big factory farm to over produce, right? If whereas if they were only working with small farms, that's a completely different story. So they said, so imperfect foods claimed that only five to 10% total of their produce comes from industrial producers like dole. Okay. Which means it probably wasn't destined for the landfill in the first place. Hungry Harvest says they get most of their food from farms under 500 acres that were just leaving excess food in the fields in the first place. So okay, they Hungry Harvest didn't have exact numbers on where, which farmers they're working with. I don't like that either. No. Like you want some transparency. Again, imperfect produce has a calculator that shows your impact, personally, if you use our service alone for groceries, so if you only buy one of their CSA, CSA style boxes, as they call it, you can save up to 384 pounds of recovered food for being tossed in a landfill. 9000 Plus gallons of water 38 hours saved shopping. So if you just have the box come every week, and up to 288 pounds of carbon dioxide conserved. Okay, I don't know how they calculate all of that. But yeah, that was the thing with mill. They just were very transparent about doing their own math. Yeah. And they're like, this might change later. But for now, this sounds really good. Like what? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if they're doing the same thing. But well, I mean, it sounds like, okay, they can average how many pounds of recovered food they sell every year. So that makes sense. I don't know about the water though. Right? I mean, the hour save shopping. Yes. Right. Fine. Okay, they also don't charge a subscription fee. So you pay by the box. Okay. It is an annual, like a monthly, like, my CSA was the same way you could cancel if you're going to be in town or something. You could cancel that month. But you really Yeah. This we pay attention. Yeah. But yeah, you basically you have a week to change the items in your box around if you want to, and then they just ship it to you. Now they do also do what Radwell does. So they have like everyone in your zip code get service on the same day to reduce carbon. Okay, but that's nice. Yeah. So now the smaller scale farmers that they that the ugly food companies do work with and purchase from. They do say they do donate less food to food banks. But oh, this can be good for them because they make more money to offset their costs. Because that's the issue when you donate to the food bank. Yeah, maybe you might get a little tax break. But it's always better to sell the food for a small farmer. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. smaller farms means less Big Ag right. And we want less Big Ag. We want less factory farming. We want thoughtful consumers. Also, the ugly food folks don't consider CSAs as their main competitors and the imperfect foods CEOs said that when they did a survey only one in 10 of their cars Farmers had ever used a food delivery service at all previously, so they're not really stealing, you know, and the CSA people who said that their sales had gone down 30% or whatever didn't really say if there were other market conditions like, okay, you know, maybe, maybe people just quit pre buying groceries in the first place, you know? Yeah. Another thing is imperfect foods. And what does that Hungry Harvest? What did I say it was hungry, I can't even remember the name. I started calling them IP and hh thing because I was like, I'm tired of typing hungry, hungry, I really, really wait. They also do some charitable work on top of to fight hunger on top of their, you know, suppose saving food waste. So imperfect Foods has a reduced cost box program. So if you qualify for SNAP benefits, I don't think you have to be in the SNAP program. So SNAP benefits are for it's lower cost food. And you usually get an EBT card that, you know, you get some money from the government to be able to feed your family usually, yeah. If you are in the income level that qualifies that even if you're not in the program, they'll send a box of ugly produce for less than it would cost to buy it from the grocery store. They say, okay, okay, so this isn't quite as good as getting a free box from your local food bank or community organization. Yeah, but it's still a sign that you know, they're thinking about low income. Can you use your snap card on? You can't yet. Okay, you can't use your snap card. really help but okay, well, the other thing is, the program is completely full, so you can't even sign up anymore. Gotcha. Which says a lot about the state of America. You know, it does are hungry, y'all. Okay, but they do partner with other suppliers to supplement your produce box is another thing. So you're not just getting ugly produce. So imperfect foods are imperfect produce. I call them imperfect foods, but as an imperfect produce. I thought it was imperfect foods. I think it's imperfect produce, okay. You're probably right. No, it is imperfect foods. Okay. That chain okay, it is i Okay. Imperfect foods. Correct me is imperfect foods, ladies and gentlemen. They have sustainable food partners that they work with for their own line of foods where they make like, you know, yogurt dip pretzels from rescued with rescued sprinkles, right? Or upcycle the food or leftover ingredients from other food producers, so they're taking other types of food waste and making new snacks out of it. Did you just say rescued sprinkles? Yes. That's the example they use. Oh, my God. I know. I was like a sprinkler rescue. And I like the idea of upcycled food. I mean, they're taking green hooey words. And but it is an interesting concept, right? They're using what other producers are throwing away and making a new line of food that you can put in your grocery box. Right, right. So I kind of thought that was kind of a cool idea. Yeah, it's a cool idea. Just don't call it rescued sprinkles. I know. Stupid. I know. I'm like no and you're rescued sprinkles for your rescue. Pitbull. Exactly. Exactly. Okay, so they have all these initiatives and and I feel like they kind of responded to their critics pretty well. I do not. I don't know it is again. Oh boy, another rich people thing you can do you know, to feel better about yourself, right? How much you might get into this. But how much does a box cost? That I actually didn't get into? I need to get into that. Let me look that up real quick. I don't know. I don't know if there's like a standard x. I'm just curious if it would be more than my CSA because I go I come away with my CSA with like, so much food. Yeah. Okay, let me see. I know they just started let's let's you can just come with me on this. Right. So on. Let me put in my zip code get started. Okay, so they rescue food from going to waste you shop during your window, we deliver your blah, blah, blah. Let's see. What am I shopping for one adult. So here's your window. This is not a very good website. Okay. I don't care about organic. So they asked you that too, to have any dietary restrictions. I eat it all. Okay, what do I buy each week? You can decide. I do meat and fish. I do produce pentreath dairy. Or they they send me to? Yeah. Interesting. Okay, they're saving my answers. Let's see. Jamie's Just kidding. Yeah, no, well, yeah, I think that's one of the things I do. What, okay, so 36 to $46 for one adult per box. I guess it depends how much how much food there is. But yeah, or what items like if you don't get meat when we are you don't get there. Yeah, I'm free to get to that person. Yes, that's probably about what I spend. And okay, and if they do charge for delivery, so it's free delivery for order. is over 60 bucks. Okay, so I use Instacart. And that might actually be more for me because I always have to if I do$40 I get free delivery. But then I tip. Yeah, Instacart actually jacks up their prices, like the prices of the products. It's not just you're paying a fee. I did a comparison of Safeway. Yeah. And I did like Instacart Safeway versus regular Safeway on their website, and it was the actual products were more expensive. Yeah, well, and they, they actually started a new thing where that it shows like, for a lot of their items, if it's similar to what's in the store, okay, but I think that's mostly for like total wine or like alcohol. Okay, I just, I hate going to the grocery store so much. Oh, that's funny, actually. Kind of like, Yeah, I know, my, the guy I'm dating loves the grocery store. But I, it's just for me, it's like, I get overwhelmed. When I go to the grocery store. It's just easier to have somebody else do it. And also, I get that. It's an hour like parking is no, no, no, I know. I get it. My grocery store is kind of lovely. Because it's Suburban. So yeah, there's room there's always parking. Yep. You're not like elbowing people. Obviously, like I'm stuck in line behind the one person who can't who's like writing a check or something, you know? Yes. Probably my grandma. Yep. Anyway, is it worth it? They are supporting small farms. They donate a lot of their proceeds to fight hunger. And they're fighting the stupid aesthetic standards that we all have for food, right? They're like, make it we don't need food to be fashion. Okay, but they may be perpetuating big agriculture's incentive to over produce. Yep. If you're already grocery shopping and buying other produce anyway, you're just adding another rung on your carbon footprint via delivery. Although we did talk about how having if you're only shopping, if you're only getting your food from imperfect foods, it might be better anyway, because you're saving a carbon footprint that way. Yeah, but Let's also not forget to mention, I feel like box. Yeah, well, I was gonna say I feel like the chances of you getting every single item you need from this box for your entire weeks where the food are so slim. I don't know I wonder about because I that my CSA started selling dairy and meat and stuff. And it was when they had like rice. You know, it was it was actually like a one stop shop. And I found that you know, as to shopping for me, that's another thing, right? If you baby items, and you know, the other thing is like, I'm not buying my shampoo from them. Right? So, yeah. But yeah. Or, you know, like, you need a bottle of Coca Cola. They're not going to have it. Not that anyone needs a bottle of Coca Cola. But yeah, I mean, it's a possibility there also Okay, Hungry Harvest only delivers to Maryland DC. Philly, Southern New Jersey, northern Delaware. I spell Delaware really funny in this Dalloway, your W A. Ye are I guess I was thinking about it phonetically. And then Raleigh, North Carolina, imperfect foods is in the west, south central region, the Midwest, the Northeast and the West Coast. Okay, they did have I looked him up for my old zip code in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and they had a partner that they worked with called misfit something. So yeah, I've seen that. Yeah. So it looks like imperfect Foods has a wider reach by I don't know, just because there's so much nuance to it. And I'm, I'm kind of like not really sure you need to buy ugly food. You know, like maybe just buy from your local farm. I my granola rating. I gave it a chewy. So three out of five. Did we talk about what this is? Our granola rating we did it beginning a little bit but I'll go into more detail we we rate all of our products and services on a scale of one to five granolas one being soggy which is bad five being breaker too tough, which is good because you want crunchy granola crunchy or the better. This I gave a chewy, which is chewy medium. Okay, three out of five. Yeah, they will be doing some good. They may be rescuing some ugly food. Again, if you're gonna get your groceries delivered anyway, why not get it from that seems like they're affordable. It's you know better probably than buying just from a local grocery store that just go straight to big agriculture. You know, you're definitely they have options for organic and you know, other other food structures. So it's kind of like a CSA, but I you know, I don't know, maybe it's better to get a CSA right. What I want to talk about is, you know, where do we go from here? Okay, imperfect foods isn't solving the whole problem because it's higher up the food chain. We need big ag to quit producing extra food but we also need the biggest thing is we need you and me the individual consumers to stop throwing food away. Just stop. Only buy what you need. It's the leading cause of wasted food in the US. Yeah, I'm really amazed. I know. This. A lot of stuff is like we feel like we can't really make an impact but like this we really this is the one this fast fashion quit buying new clothes. Quit throwing new clothes away and quit buying new food. Just quit. Yeah, no Okay, don't quit like don't buy food. I was gonna say, I for a while was, I felt like a big food waster. Because I don't know, I just felt like really frenzied, and I didn't plan. I didn't, I didn't have time for meal planning and all that shit. I didn't think I did. And I still don't. But, um, but then what I did was I just stopped buying as much when I went to the grocery store. It's not like I had a better plan or a better system. I just stopped buying as many meals worth of food. Because a lot of them were like, fingers crossed, I'll make that food. Yeah, no, that's, that's my thing is I have really helped. Yeah, I have greatly overestimated my capacity for making food. Yes, in the past few years, because I've just been worn out and exhausted and I just don't have the bandwidth to bring a meal together. And the thing is the way that I solve that problem is I buy premade meals. Yes, hit him up, because I just can't right now. Like I have all the ingredients to make things and it's like, something in me. I'm, I'm too exhausted to chop an onion, which is so depressing. I know. No, but a lot of us are in the same boat. And yeah, but I actually I did notice like, I think I was worried if I don't get all my food right now then I'm gonna have them on a night where we don't have anything to make for dinner or whatever. But that hadn't happened. And it actually made me less stressed about all this shit to cook. Yeah, you just have to jump. Just take the plunge. I mean, there's something about like, Girl dinner. Right? Have you heard about girl dinner? No. It's kind of like whatever you have in the pantry. Oh, like a 20 year old. Who comes home and is like, I don't want to order UberEATS again, so you end up with like, popcorn. I have popcorn for dinner a lot, huh? But it's just like whatever. Like a bag of Cheetos. Real glass of wine and some cereal. Yeah, cereal is a big girl dinner. Giant girl. I mean, when you don't have kids, it's different. I mean, when you have to make mealtime and I I do enjoy I miss cooking. i Oh, yeah, I was supposed to make a sauce today and make spaghetti and I just just couldn't do it. So I had a pre bag. Oh, paroubek salad. And the here's what I wanted to start this off with. Okay, again, stop relying on sell by dates quit throwing your food out just because it says sell by or Best If Used By unless it's infant formula. Right? Refrigeration is a wonder. We can keep it a lot longer than our ancestors ever could. RTS said the two things best of us buy or sell by means it may lose quality, but it'll be safe to consume after this date. So you can still eat these things past their dates used by is the rare but highly perishable item that may have a safety concern over time. This is the stuff you need to be careful about some meat. Yeah, okay. The rule of thumb is if it's moldy, especially if it's bread or clearly rotten, yeah, throw it away. Okay. Generally food is probably still okay if it's past its quote unquote, expiration date, even meat sometimes the Atlantic says follow your nose smell stuff that has passed pass its date. If it smells rancid if it stinks really bad, doesn't smell like it's supposed to don't eat it. Even then it's highly likely it won't kill you. So don't be quite so worried about you know, and some things if you just cook them it kills all the bacteria. I don't want to advocate like taking the four month old meat stuff, free stuff if you're not going to use it. I bought chicken the other day and I realized I hadn't eaten it. I was out of town and I called my roommate and he put it in the freezer. I have something a chicken. Yes. And then you're like, Yeah, chicken, chicken. But you can use stuff that smells a little off some of it like spoiled milk. If it's if it hasn't curdled you can actually bake with it. Oh, baking? Yeah, that's interesting. See, I might do that. I wouldn't just drink it. Yeah, but maybe don't miss it because it's gonna smell might put you off. But you can also make paneer which is a kind of cheat. It's really easy. You just add lemon juice. To what I love paneer Yeah. Pina I had no idea. Yeah. Okay, so slightly older milk. That doesn't smell right. But isn't. I mean, even if it is a little curveball, you can still make cheese out of it. Amazing. Yeah, I use eggs. My mom told me like eggs are good for like a month after they're. Yeah, maybe longer eggs are probably especially if you refrigerate them Yeah. Stale bread you can make an A bread crumbs or croutons or the the way the French dude is they make French toast out of it. Pan BLT means last bread and spreads. It's gone stale. Love it. And who cares if your cereal is a little stale if you're just going to soak it in milk anyway. Yeah, exactly. So yeah. Could I use this stainless? I used to make homemade bread and I use the smallest possible bread. I was like, I'm gonna get something make some Yes, I use it for French toast and it was pretty chewy. Yeah, also delicious. It's I mean, just got to soak it a little longer in the milk mixture. Yeah, yep. Put more syrup on it. Exactly. Free stuff before. If you think you're not able to use it broccoli, meat, everything just Throw in the freezer. Also, if you have jars of stuff that you're not going to use, donate them. Go to the food bank. Yeah, my neighborhood has a free fridge by one of the restaurants that you can just Yeah, I have like a jar of harmony that I ended up with. And I'm not going to use harmony, right? Nobody will make a solely but I use frozen personally I don't use like canned hominy Give me a break here. Okay, also composting, start composting. Love it, that's if you're gonna throw food away, or scraps, compost it. I know not everyone has access to compost. But it can really help start lobbying your city or state to create composting programs for residents and to get restaurants and farms to be mandated to do so. That's a big one. Because if 43% of our food waste comes from us, you know, as individual consumers 40% still comes from restaurants, right? Because this consumer grocery stores, they need to be composting. Yeah, that's huge. Yeah. Wow. We're we're also going to talk about too good to go, which is something that my roommate uses, which is when stuff is a little bit past, it's, it's like, it didn't sell the day it was fresh, like doughnuts. And they'll just put it up on this too good to go. app and you can like sign up to go get it and you get it for free. Wow. So like bagels and things that didn't sell or don't. Oh my gosh, this just reminded me when I was young, when I was young. I was like probably early 20s I went dumpster diving. Yep. And we it was just a one night thing but we actually found clean trash bag. A trash can with a clean bag wind, you know, perfectly clean, perfectly safe, full chock full of same day Panera bagels, you and other. They can't donate. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, we took a shit. We got like bread and bagels and everything. We took it home and froze it. It was great. Yeah, I used to forge in a coffee shop in college. And we couldn't donate our bagels at the end of the day. And so whoever worked the last shift just took them home. Yes, freezer full of bagels. You get so sick of them after a while. But I mean, they're nice. It's yeah, that's great. You know, let's mitigate food waste. I mean, first of all, it shouldn't be. You would want restaurants to be able to manage the numbers enough to know they're not going to need that many. But what can you do? Yeah. Well, well, in other ways, you know, sign up for a local CSA because local farming is better than big ag. It's also really fun. It's a weekly ritual every Friday. Yeah, I missed I need to look into a CSA here. Maybe that'll that's the thing when I had bunny rabbits, you know, like, it was great to have a CSA because they would give me like a giant bag of greens. And I'd be like, alright, I always look very healthy. I was not it was funny. Yeah, that's a funny day, the greens, but yeah. Okay. And lastly, quit caring what your produce looks like. Love it by the bruised apple. Maybe try and go to a lower income neighborhood and see what it's like to shop there. Yeah, you're cheaper produce. I mean, I again, I don't want to advocate like, I don't want so much wrong with that in so many ways. Yeah, I was gonna say it could be really eye opening, though, to go and see how different it is if it is different. Right. Or like if it's cheaper, but it's still edible. Yeah. Or, you know, like, not even just edible, but like, it's still good food. You know? It just has a bruise. Oh, my dog just busted in here. He is ready for his evening walk. I see you. Hi. Okay, ma'am. It's time. It's time. He's like, get done here, lady. All right. Thank you for listening tonight. And I hope this helps with its food waste and the ugly food movement. I might try it. Maybe I'll try it and see. Yeah, I would be curious. I would definitely love to hear if you do try it. But I mean, now I'm quite a bit more skeptical of it. But yeah, I mean, but yeah, it's a mixed bag. Like a lot of things. Yeah, like so many things. So we'll see. Anyway. Well, thank you for listening again. Hit us up on on your review down there. Give us five stars if you can, it really helps us out. Yay. Please do that when we appreciate your listening to us. And we will talk to you next week. No, what are we talking about next week? Oh, yeah. Good call. Let me see. Bulk shopping. Oh, yeah. It's a cat cat two in a row. Cat, cat, cat, cat cat back to back. You're talking about bulk shopping and try to Yeah, try examining whether that helps. Yeah, take those reusable jars that you saved and go buy your food in bulk. And I know Whole Foods interested. There's there's book sections. I want Oh, yeah, I might try it out. Yes. I will let you know how I might try it out to actually okay, because there's we have tons of like healthy, healthy food source. So yeah, and this is like, what do you mean? I can't order Instacart but, you know, this could be a fun date for me and the man who loves going to the grocery store. There you go. Perfect. It's gone by bulk. I think he's behind on listening. So he's gonna be like, Why are you talking about me on your blog? Because you're so great. Okay. Anyway. All right. I will talk to you next week about bulk foods. Yeah, that sounds good. All right. No better. Thank you. Bye