In an alley in Northeast Washington, D.C., hundreds of pounds of produce are piled haphazardly on pallets. Mexican Fruits, a discount grocer, can't sell the fruit and vegetables inside these boxes because it has gone soft or is lightly bruised. Some will be donated, but most boxes are destined for a large, green Dumpster nearby.
Before it gets tossed, Roger Gordon grabs one box of lightly speckled bananas. Gordon is the co-founder of Food Cowboy, a start-up that's trying to redirect discarded food from Dumpsters to hunger relief groups. He's here at Mexican Fruits because he's hoping they'll call him the next time they have this problem.
"We want to set ourselves up as air traffic control for food," says Gordon, who's based in the Washington, D.C., area.
According to a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, 40 percent of food in the U.S. goes uneaten. And many see this wasted food as a business opportunity — from start-ups like Food Cowboy and Crop Mobster to the former president of Trader Joe's, who is opening up a market. But although food waste is an obvious problem, it's a complicated one to solve, whether you're targeting farmers, retailers or consumers.
In the retail food world, a lot of waste happens because distributors don't have time to find a home for the perishable food stores won't accept.
Gordon's brother, Richard, came to understand this first hand. In his work as a trucker, he often hauls "kick" loads of food that's been rejected by retailers often just for aesthetic reasons. If the load is small enough, he can take it home. But if it's large, his distributor might instruct him to drop it at the nearest Dumpster or landfill.
Convinced there should be a better way, the brothers started working together to scout out nearby food charities along Richard's trucking route. "The trucker is under time pressure ... But oftentimes the charity is just a few miles away from where the shipment has been rejected," he says. "It's just that the truckers don't know about it."
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