The ugly story
Thousands of imperfect, or ‘ugly’ apples have to be thrown out every day by Aussies farmers as consumers need aesthetically pleasing produce. This causes a massive amount of waste that heads to landfill and contributes heavily to C02 emissions.
On a product discovery trip to find new & innovative ways to make alcohol, we saw the effects of wonky/ugly fruit wastage first-hand. Up to 40% of the fruit on farms we visited was deemed unsellable solely due to aesthetics. After conversations with farmers and a deep-dive into a new production process, Ugly vodka was born.
Ugly facts
Food rotting in landfill releases methane – 28x stronger than carbon dioxide.
Source: https://www.ipcc.ch/srccl/
One third of all food produced is lost or wasted –around 1.3 billion tonnes of food –costing the global economy close to $940 billion each year.
Source: https://www.fao.org/save-food/resources/keyfindings/en/
Up to 10% of global greenhouse gases comes from food that is produced, but not eaten.