buying ugly veggies encourages farmers not to throw away 'below standard' looking produce before anyone has a chance to eat it. After 700,000 pounds of food recovered and 150 college campuses, we began looking for ways to have an even bigger impact. And we found it – on farms, where 20% of the produce grown never makes it to a human mouth, in large part because it is simply the wrong shape, size, or color.
We realized that across the country, ugly produce (or as we like to say, “cosmetically-challenged produce”) is being treated like a second-class citizen. Every year six billion pounds of fruits and vegetables go to waste on farms across the U.S. just for looking a little different from other produce. Instead of going to feed people, all that wasted produce is sitting in landfills, where it releases methane gas into the atmosphere.