2 minutes read
Oddbox is a weekly veg delivery box on a mission to save delicious, fresh fruit and veg from going to waste because it’s “too odd”, “too ugly”, or there are just “too many”. Here, Oddbox co-founder and all-round do-gooder, Emilie, talks about the issue of food waste and their weekly rescue mission.
Oddbox is about tackling food waste at farm level. For me, the spark for Oddbox happened while on holiday in Portugal. Here, and in most of mainland Europe, you see loads of amazing produce in the supermarkets which don’t look perfect – but taste amazing. But in the UK, supermarkets have quite tight specifications on size, shape, and colour of the produce, so anything ‘odd’ is rejected before even reaching the shelf.
On top of that, we live in a demand-driven society: we want everything available, all year round. But the effect of this is constant overproduction – meaning there’s surplus produce going to waste all of the time. And that’s where we come in!
Even though fighting food waste has been identified as the #1 way to keep global heating down to 2 degrees by 2100, only 32% of the population see a link between food waste and the climate crisis. The more we can raise that awareness, the more people will be willing to act on it. And action doesn’t have to mean going completely vegan or zero waste, just starting with that first step and learning as you go.
While it’s a good solution, saving food waste at this level is still putting a band aid on a huge problem. It’s similar to recycling in a sense that if we didn’t have so much packaging, we wouldn’t need to recycle so much. If there wasn’t this problem of food overproduction, we wouldn’t need to save so much surplus in the first place.
It’s very rare to see reports on food waste at farm level, and unless we have that visibility, then it’s very difficult to take action. Governments need to push harder for more visibility and reporting so we can address food waste at the very start of the supply chain.
“Oddbox is one of my favourite deliveries – it’s always so exciting to have fresh and varied produce each week and make an impact without even thinking about it. There’s a huge momentum of people wanting to do gooder, and it’s amazing what Oddbox has achieved in making people think differently and appreciate different or in this case, appreciate odd.”
– Jenny, Rubies in the Rubble Founder
