Photo courtesy of Rejuce
Rejuce
Each year over 400,000 tonnes of fresh, nutritious fruit and veg is wasted by the retail industry. Cast aside and left to rot in expensive landfill sites. That’s the equivalent of 2.7 billion Granny Smith apples. Or maybe several whole hotels made of food. At Rejuce, we think it’s wasteful nonsense and we’re doing everything in our power to address it.
Rejuce's mission is to dry up these edible food surpluses, in London’s biggest markets and distribution centres, providing affordable healthy products to localist shops, cafés, bars, pubs, clubs and restaurants.
Its constitution is simple: leave no trace and no waste. Rejuce actively seeks to reduce, re-use and recycle other peoples food surpluses. It tries to act as ethical and sustainable as possible, thus setting a new trend in the consumption of second generation/chance products.
How it works
Early each morning the Rejuce team set out to London’s biggest food markets and rescue the unsold fruit and vegetables, made locally in Hackney Wick’s Fish Island, from un-concentrated, whole fresh fruit that would otherwise be wasted. These food surpluses occur because of logistical limitations of the daily problem of supplying London's fluctuating demand of fruit & vegetables.
The food is then selected, collected & transported from markets, normally by trolley bikes or Rejuce's electric milk float, then transformed into juices & smoothies. After passing through quality control points, the juice fills 100% RPET recycled bottles & eco-friendly labels that complete this ethical/sustainable product. So far the Rejuce team has saved over 30 tonnes of food.
Added value of Rejuce
How Rejuce defines food waste/surpluses: "not good enough to be sold but too good to be thrown away".
- This category is full of food that is condemned to be wasted for many reasons, e.g. slightly bruised, over ordering, misshapen unsymmetrical, damaged on transport, too ripe or under ripe, not enough space or time to deal with it, past it's impractical sell by date, not properly packaged or labelled. Thanks to Rejuce, much of these surpluses are saved.
- At Rejuce, its team is able to generate a sustainable profit that is used to reinvest into its food saving mission and expand comfortably to ensure it doesn't falter with its core values concerning food waste.
- Production of fresh juice made from raw, un-concentrated, un-pasteurised, whole fresh fruit that would otherwise have been thrown out.
Links and other sources
- Follow the activities of Rejuce through its Website, Facebook page or Twitter.
- The Banquets is a community fundraising collaboration to reduce food waste between a collective of East London social enterprises, Rejuce, The Peoples Kitchen, The Koyaanisqatsi Trust, and The Luna Cooperative.