The amount of perfectly OK fresh food that gets wasted because of imbalances in the food chain is shocking (see below). Equally shameful is the vast quantities of fruit and veg that gets binned because they don’t look so pretty. But really, can a carrot ever be ugly? Is a healthy apple ever not pretty enough? No, of course not, don’t be stupid. However, it takes a very special person to tackle this type of global nonsense and that person is Jenny Costa.
After securing an MA in Maths and Economics and picking up some serious financial expertise at Odey Asset Management, she founded Rubies in the Rubble. This wonderful food company takes all the magnificent ‘waste’ farm food that is deemed not good enough for the shops and makes a cracking array of relishes, chutneys, ketchups and much else besides.
Jenny – and her almost all-female team – have won so many awards for their condiments that we don’t have space to list them.
(Here’s a depressing snippet on food waste: According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations, roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year — approximately 1.3 billion tonnes — gets lost or wasted. In the UK alone, 7.2 million tonnes of food and drink is thrown away by households each year, leaving no appetite for leftovers!)