From Trash to Treasure: Why's It So Hard to Save Restaurant Leftovers From the Dumpster?

10/01/24 • 48 min

3 Listeners

Every day, at the end of service, restaurants throw away tons of entirely edible food: heaps of pastries and whole loaves of bread, vegetables chopped but not cooked, noodle dough, fish off-cuts, and more. An estimated 20 billion meals's worth of still edible food overall is tossed every year here in the US, and more than 85 percent of it ends up in the landfill. Meanwhile, more than one in ten Americans are food insecure. So why is it so hard to keep all of that perfectly good food out of the trash and get it onto people’s plates instead? This week, we’re taking a deep dive into the dumpster (not literally!), to explore the most innovative and surprising new solutions to this toughest of food challenges, including the wizards transforming everything from stale bagels to gallons of banana cream concentrate into a delicious dinner. Did someone order meals, not methane? Oui chef!

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