The culinary solution to prevent food waste
A solution by Unverschwendet submitted to Make conscious consumption mainstream in Vienna
Every year farmers have to throw away bilions of fresh fruits and vegetables due to surplus and high beauty standards of the market. With Unverschwendet we offer a culinary and creative solution to utilise surplus crops and prevent food waste. As a first step, we preserve surplus fruits through traditional cooking methods. In the long-term we want to offer various solutions to rescue even more.
One Page Summary
Farmers are forced to produce up to 200% of the amount of fruit needed to ensure that enough of them meet the excessive market norms. The highly-specialized requirements of supermarkets for the shape, colour and size of fruits lead to surplus of up to 500 kg per day for one small farm. In most cases, these surplus fruits are thrown away.
You can read more about the 7 main reasons why fruits and vegetables are thrown away here (German): https://www.unverschwendet.at/die-gruende-der-unverschwendung-warum-wird-gutes-obst-und-gemuese-weggeworfen/
With Unverschwendet (Unwasted) we offer a culinary and creative solution to utilise surplus crops and prevent food waste. As a first step, we preserve surplus fruits through traditional crafts such as pickling, cooking and thus prevent them from being thrown away.
Here you can watch our pitch video for the Social Challenges EU Call: Make conscious consumption mainstream in Vienna
In the long-term we want to offer various solutions - like in-house production, outsourced activities, regional branch establishment and transfer of resources and licences - to utilise all kinds of surpluses. As one of the very first companies, Unverschwendet emphasises the great potential of unutilised resources in the area of food and enables people to a culinary and enjoyable access to food waste prevention and a sustainable lifestyle.
Through great and extraordinary taste variantions, big love for small details within the product design and various social media campaigns and videos we create a joyful way of raising awareness on the issue of food waste and a new niche in sustainable consumerism.
In this video (unfortunately in German) we show why and how we got 300kg of asparagus that came too early for Viennese restaurants and how we give 150kg o fit to Wiener Tafel to support people living in poverty: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnesZoaeqZ0
In another video we explain why carrots grow in certain ways and therefore won't be sold in supermarkets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhJcyTCgEA8
The social enterprise is run by the siblings Cornelia and Andreas Diesenreiter and supported by a great team and partners.
