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Meet Isabel Soares, a Portuguese activist who is combating food waste by setting up a cooperative that sells 'ugly fruit.'
Soares recently spoke about her cooperative Fruta Feia (which translates to ugly fruit) at the Mad Symposium headed by René Redzepi in Copenhagen. Incredibly, in a little over a year she helped save over 41 tons of perfectly good food from going to waste.
That's because Fruita Feia sells fruit distributors have discriminated against for not meeting aesthetic standards of size and appearance. Soares cites that in Europe almost 30 percent of the produce grown by farmers suffers the same fate. Thus, her cooperative helps feed others while reducing wasteful practices.
"If the same thing happened to me, being so short, I wouldn't be fit for the market," she jokes. Here is her amazing speech at MAD4:
