This week I’ve sent my end of the month Zero Carbon Luton newsletter, full of local climate actions of one sort or another, as Luton heads for net zero by 2040. Subscribe if you like. Here’s a story from the October edition. It’s the kind of thing I’d post here too, because it’s both local to me and a world first:
You’ve probably heard of ‘wonky’ fruit and veg schemes that sell on mis-shapen fresh food that’s been rejected by the supermarkets. What if you could do the same thing with baked goods? That’s what Earth & Wheat do, and as far as I know they’re the first to think of it.
The company was set up in 2021 by business student James Eid. A fourth generation baker at the country’s largest producer of flatbreads, he had seen the amount of perfectly edible wasted items that the factory created. Things that were too big, too small, mis-shapen or just surplus. This is common across the industry, with 16% of food waste occurring at the point of production. So Eid developed a side business for dealing with bakery waste. Customers can sign up for ‘wonky bread’ boxes and receive deliveries of bread, crumpets, wraps, pittas and so forth from his family’s business and a variety of other suppliers.
Saving food waste cuts greenhouse gases from waste, and also saves the energy that’s gone into the growing and production of the food in the first place. It’s a problem with global significance, with a third of the world’s food going to waste. That happens in the home, at the retail stage, in production, all the way back to the farm. There are different solutions at each stage, and this is a useful intervention for the losses among producers.
They’re based in Dunstable and deliver all over the UK, and they deliver wonky veg as well. Why not give Earth & Wheat’s subscription scheme a go?
The Earthbound Report 