Food waste has met its most innovative opponent yet, a new supermarket in Denmark, where the vegetables are dirt cheap - and too ugly or old to sell elsewhere.
WeFood, which opened in Copenhagen last week, stocks only food that is past its official expiry date or unworthy of other supermarket shelves because of aesthetic imperfections and damaged packaging. The grocer, opened by Danish NGO Folkekirkens Nødhjælp, is hoping to lure shoppers of all socioeconomic backgrounds by selling its food at steep discounts - somewhere between 30 to 50 per cent cheaper than other standard supermarkets.
The new supermarket is a not-so-subtle swing at the modern food system, which often prioritizes food safety at the expense of waste. Roughly one-third of all food produced worldwide ends up in the garbage, complicating efforts to alleviate hungry around the globe. But the problem is especially pronounced in developed countries, thanks in large part to stigmas attached to unappealing fruit and vegetables and overly conservative expiration dates.
In Denmark, the unreasonable standards send 1.5 billion pounds of edible produce to landfill, undermining efforts to bring nutrition to households that struggle to put food on the table. Elsewhere, the consequences are even more grave: In the United States, for instance, some 70 billion pounds of food were wasted in 2012, 20 per cent more than was wasted only a decade before. Americans, rather incredibly, throw out more food than plastic, paper, metal, and glass, a fact that reflects poorly on the country's fussiness about eating only the freshest foods possible.
To fill its shelves with unwanted but perfectly edible food, WeFood has established a web of partnerships with local supermarkets and butchers, produce importers, and even manufacturers of organic granola bars, according to The Independent. It has also won the support of the Danish government, which publicly lamented the country's contribution to food waste.
