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Canada: This Metro Vancouver business is diverting 70,000 kg of food from the trash. Here’s how

Peko produce offers ‘ugly’ fruits and vegetables at a fraction of the retail price

CBC News
Jun 26, 2022

Excerpt:

A couple of enterprising young business students in Metro Vancouver are reducing carbon emissions by saving ugly and aging produce from being thrown away.

Sang Le and Arielle Lok buy misshapen and surplus fruits and vegetables from farmers and wholesalers, then redistribute them to consumers through their company, Peko Produce.

Food waste accounts for up to eight per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions, according to non-profit Project Drawdown, which aims to reduce carbon emissions. The Commission for Environmental Cooperation estimates Canadians waste about 13 million tonnes of food each year, which makes us one of the top per capita food wasters in the world.

That’s where companies like Peko Produce comes in.

Le, 22, and Lok, 20, launched the company in May 2021. They started by visiting farmers markets to meet the people growing the food to find out if they had extra fruit and vegetables after they harvested, and sure enough, most said yes.

The pair got to work packing boxes through the summer.

Read the complete article here.