My eldest son and his flatmates like nothing more than to spend a Friday evening dumpster diving. Now, these lads are all from good homes and have the good fortune of not having to dumpster dive out of any necessity, rather they do it because it's fun, because they have a social and environmental conscience and because they are troubled by the amount of food waste that occurs in our society (the odd packet of Tim Tams they come across might have something to do with it as well).
The stuff they find is legendary - no half-eaten bread rolls or curdled milk here - these lads manage to find some top-shelf offerings in the dumpsters they frequent and for a bunch of budget-conscious university students, some of the stuff they've filled their bags with has very much moved the needle on their usual fare. This is great for these lads and the variety of their dietary intake but raises questions about food production, distribution and the waste that seems to be an incumbent part of the system.
I've been thinking about food waste lately in the context of a new startup that I've gotten involved with in the past few months. Supie is the creation of Sarah Balle, someone who literally grew up planted in the dirt of a Pukekohe vegetable farm. Sarah has seen firsthand how broken the food marketplace is. Unlike most of us who moan about problems and do nothing about them, she took the bull by the metaphorical horns and created a startup to deal with what she perceives as the issues in the market.
Supie is an online supermarket that has an emphasis on local producers and the sort of produce that you'd find at farmers' markets. Instead of growers and producers having to distribute through multiple levels of intermediary, and very much being at the whim of those higher up the chain, Supie collapses that relationship. It's the next best thing to having a direct grower/consumer relationship.