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Too good for the garbage - On the road with the food savers

October 24, 2020

At least eleven million tons of fresh food are thrown away in Germany alone every year. Because they are not attractive enough or are not harvested in time and left to rot in the fields. But food savers show there is a solution.

https://p.dw.com/p/3kNoK

Selma Seddik, Freke van Nimwegen and Bart Roetert run three restaurants in the Netherlands based around "rescued food." They use almost exclusively products that were intended for the garbage - fruit and vegetables that are no longer on sale but which can still be eaten, bread from the day before or surplus fish. They also serve beers brewed from potatoes and bread. Selma and her team have already been able to save over 500,000 kilos of food from the tip. In Cologne, Nicole Klaski is always roaming the fields of organic farms. The farmers allow her to collect crooked or undersized vegetables that were left over from the harvest. She offers the rescued food - as well as expired (but edible) supermarket goods - in her shop "The Good Food" in Cologne. It is the first shop of this kind in Germany. Customers pay what the goods are worth to them. At the end of the harvest season, Achim Fießinger, a young mosterei owner from Ketzür, joins fellow-spirits to pick apples from trees in public spaces in the surrounding area that they then process into fresh juice. "There are tons of fruit that go unused", says Achim Fießinger. "The good apples drop, lie in the dirt and rot. That has to change."