Translator: Rhonda Jacobs Reviewer: Cristina Bufi-Pöcksteiner
Each of us is accountable for spending $1.50 on food that we throw away
every single day.
To put that in perspective,
there are 1.5 billion people on this planet
that live on less than $1.50 per day.
And across America,
we spend $165 billion on food that we throw away every single year.
So for the past three years, I've been fighting food waste and hunger,
and my whole life I've wanted to become a social entrepreneur.
And when I was at the University of Maryland,
I chose to pursue that dream in the food space.
At the time, I had no idea what I'd be getting myself into,
but I recently found
that key to ending hunger is actually to waste less.
And there are 49 million Americans that are food insecure.
What if we could spend that $165 billion on feeding them?
Right?
And I found the solution through a couple of years of research.
And I think I've also found, really, the key
to making sure that we can all take accountability for food waste
because I think that's the core of the problem,
our lack of accountability.
We never think that this is our problem; we think it's someone else's.
We think it's the farmer's problem, the grocery store, the restaurant.
"Why are they wasting so much food?"
Well, I think we need to switch the question
and ask ourselves: Why am I wasting so much food?
What can I do to stop it?
This is important because food is the foundation of human development
and societal advancement.
It's an essential need that we can't take for granted.
Think of all the innovation that's happened
over the past 20, 50, 100, 1,000 years - none of that happens without food, right?
And by the end of this talk,
I want to show you how you can prevent food from being wasted.
But before I get into what we do and what you can do,
we have to dive deeper into the abyss of food waste.
So this is Cory.
He's a sixth generation farmer from Biglerville, Pennsylvania.
And he has thousands of pounds of apples that he can't sell
because some are too big,
some are too small.
Cory works hard to support his farm,
and he can't afford to have this valuable, delicious produce get thrown away
that he put so much back-breaking work into.
Now, a couple of weeks ago we got a call about a truckload of cabbage -
17,000 pounds - that were rejected because of specks of dirt on the cabbage.
Specks of dirt on the cabbage that grows in the ground!
Raise you hand if you would eat this cabbage and wash it off, right?
This is crazy.
And the sad part is, this directly affects the other half of the equation,
which are the 15 million people living in food insecurity in this country.
So this is a map of my hometown of Baltimore.
And in these gray areas, you'll see school districts
that are underserved
and have poor facilities and poor performance.
Now, in this next map, you'll see the areas marked in red
which are food deserts.
How are we expecting kids growing up in these neighborhoods
to succeed when they have no access to healthy food outside of school,
and inside of school, Congress literally declares this to be a vegetable.
I cannot make this up. Look it up. Congress declares pizza a vegetable.
It's insane.
And I can't stand by; I refuse to stand by while this problem persists.
So when I was at Maryland,
I decided to take a different approach to solving this issue.
I decided to start selling recovered fruits and vegetable and herbs
in the basement of my dorm.
And I basically became the underground produce kingpin of College Park.
Except, don't get me wrong! I was selling legal herbs!
I was selling legal herbs, okay?
(Laughter)
And in May 2014, I officially launched Hungry Harvest.
And we provide farmers return on their otherwise wasted crops
that look just like this - they're beautiful things.
We've got a little bit of scarring on the zucchini
that shouldn't go to waste.
We build balanced variety boxes just like this
and deliver it to our subscribers' doors once a week,
and for every box we deliver to a customer,
we also enable somebody in need to eat healthy.
So for example, we set up produce pick-up sites,
farm stands in schools that are in food deserts,
so that parents picking up their kids after school
can have access to affordable produce.
Now, imagine a world with me where Congress declares
that we can have food stands
that are selling healthy fruits and vegetables
in schools in food deserts nationwide.
Right? Doesn't that make so much sense?
Well, we're not going to wait for Congress to do that.
That's our dream; that's our mission.
And so how close are we to accomplishing that mission?
Well, earlier this year, we were featured on the show Shark Tank,
and that really helped propel our efforts
to educate Americans on why these issues matter.
And yes, if you're wondering,
this is the same, exact jacket that I was wearing up there.
In case anybody is wondering.
(Laughter)
So today, I'm really proud to announce
that this small project that started in the basement of my dorm
has now recovered one million pounds of produce
from going to waste,
and we're just getting started.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Thank you.
We're just getting started -
there's six billion that gets wasted every single year.
So here are five ways that you guys can help
actually save food from being wasted.
As consumers, we need to be the drivers of change.
When you're walking down the grocery store aisle,
pick out the produce that might not otherwise be taken,
and don't be influenced by the perceptions of perfect food -
it all tastes perfectly good.
Second thing is we need to stop wasting so much food at home.
Twenty-five percent of everything we buy at the store
ultimately goes to waste.
It's like you go to the grocery store, you buy four bags of groceries,
you drop one right in the parking lot without bothering to pick it up.
Isn't that absurd?
And actually the key to not wasting food at home
is proper use of your fridge.
Refrigerators have been around for 50 years
and somehow we still don't know how to use them.
So we made this handy fridge storage guide,
which you can go on our website and find,
and it provides tips such as:
Don't store all your produce in what I like to call the produce coffin,
that drawer you open up after a couple of weeks
and everything is moldy?
That's because not all produce is supposed to be stored in the same environment -
it likes different environments, temperatures, humidities.
The fourth thing we can do -
Actually, President Obama wrote an article in Wired magazine the other week
where he said,
"that means creating not just a quicker way to deliver take-out downtown,
but also a system that distributes excess produce to communities
where too many kids go to bed hungry."
What a novel idea!
I wonder if anybody is doing that already!
So let's let President Obama know that we are on it, on Twitter.
That would be awesome.
And finally, our team was thinking about
how we can change the conversation about food that's going to waste.
And we were thinking:
What's something that everybody uses really often
and that could relate to everybody?
And the answer was really obvious:
emojis!
Right?
Well, from my experience, food doesn't exactly look like this.
So what'd we do?
We made our own set of ugly produce emojis,
which you can download on the App Store,
and that will help change your perception of what food should look like.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
So I'll leave you with this note.
I believe in two fundamental principles
that guide my life and guide Hungry Harvest.
I believe that no food should go to waste,
no matter where it's grown, what it looks like, or how it's packaged.
And I believe that no person should go hungry,
no matter where they live, what their income is,
or how the economy's doing.
And I won't stop until that dream becomes reality.
Let's change the world ...
one ugly apple at a time.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)