NZ supermarket fights food waste with 'Odd Bunch' campaign
Countdown's Odd Bunch programme aims to help cut food waste, make healthy food more affordable and enable growers to sell more of their crop. It packages "ugly" produce, that may not have typically made it to supermarket shelves because of small imperfections or cosmetic damage, and makes them available to consumers at a reduced price.
Kaipara Kumara was one of the first growers involved with the programme and now supplies about 4000kg of kumara each week for the Odd Bunch. Managing director Anthony Blundell said the Odd Bunch represents about 4 per cent of average weekly sales.
"While 4 per cent is a small number, it is great that we are able to pack more of Kaipara Kumara's 2017 kumara crop for Countdown's shelves.
"In a year when the kumara industry's 2017 crop could be down as much as 35 per cent on 2016 because of the cool, late spring/early summer, then coupled with the recent rain [too much] over harvest time, it really bodes well for us to maximise the crop available for Countdown's customers," Mr Blundell said.
source: nzherald.co.nz
