Every morning, fresh food is traded at the wholesale market in Marseille. Thousands of zucchini, oranges, tomatoes and heads of lettuce are transported back and forth here every day. What wasn't sold because of skin defects, pressure marks or other small quirks used to end up in the trash. Fortunately, that has changed - because a non-profit fruit and vegetable kitchen has made it its goal to process all leftovers.
The newly founded "Association Fruits et Légumes Solidarité" has a special mission, according to the "Tagesschau": The initiative's employees want to process what is left over at the wholesale market in Marseille - into soup, jam or juice. Seventy-five percent of the finished products will be donated and the rest sold. In this way, the initiative should be able to finance itself in the long term.
2400 tons of fruit and vegetables are disposed of here annually
The donation is also worthwhile for wholesalers: This is because 60 percent of the equivalent value of the donated products is credited to their taxes. That's why more and more retailers are choosing to donate their unsold goods. Every year, 2400 tons of fruit and vegetables are disposed of at the Marseille wholesale market, which also annoys the traders.
Dro Kilndjian, head of the fruit and vegetable kitchen, checks the incoming produce every day and decides what to cook from it. To the „Tagesschau“ he said: "Every morning we discover anew what the wholesale market traders supply us with. We have to adapt to that. That's always exciting."
Further processing makes the food last longer
Why is food processed before it is donated or sold? "Because of the condition in which the products come to us, we often don't have enough time to redistribute them in time. So we had to find a way to extend the life of the productsby processing them," says Kilndjian.
After some laboratory tests have been carried out, the kitchen is now allowed to deliver its products. The first soups and frozen vegetable portions were donated to the initiative "Femmes du Plan d'Aou". 200 people were provided with free food there.
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Found on: Zero Waste: Initiative verkocht und spendet übriges Obst und Gemüse vom Großmarkt – watson