It is a challenge to accurately determine when conservation and resources entered the industry’s interest space. It is hard to believe, but in the last decade, most industries have made great progress in recouping their expenditures. That does not mean that our efforts should stop there. For years, scientists have wondered how we could build a reliable tool that could determine the impact of our presence on the environment. Calculating the ecological footprint could also be a step forward in achieving greater transparency. As a measurement tool, it essentially helps us estimate the impact that certain products have on the environment. However, it goes beyond simply analyzing where resources come from and how they are used at the end of the production process.
What is the ecological footprint?
The ecological footprint analyses the lack of resources, their abundance in the environment and the effect on the planet due to their use. With the resources we have today, it is now possible to find out what our personal ecological footprint is through an online calculator .
How does this relate to Equal Food?
For companies, this means that we not only need to achieve zero-waste production, but also to use our materials responsibly. And how does this relate to Equal Food? Although we are not farmers or producers, we always ensure that our products come from a reliable source and that we have as little ecological impact as possible!
The choice of products
So let’s take a look at the first part of Equal Food’s ecological footprint. Starting with the most important part: we receive fruits and vegetables that are considered imperfect and that farmers cannot sell due to their aesthetic appearance (color, size and shape) or simply because they have produced more than their customers want to buy, resulting in overproduction. Their traditional customers (e.g. supermarkets) place great importance on aesthetic quality, which means that they end up rejecting fruits and vegetables that do not meet their beauty standards. In addition, farmers often end up having to deal with the challenge of selling their greener produce (believe it or not) because it will still take some time to make the journey from the farms to the warehouses and from the warehouses to smaller warehouses, from the smaller warehouses to the supermarkets and from the supermarkets to your shopping cart. So when faced with imperfect, over-green or over-produced produce, many farmers did not have the tools to sell part of their harvest!
How does Equal Food help?
And this is where we come in! We buy these products from their harvests, helping farmers generate additional income. Furthermore, by buying this harvest, we ensure that no food is wasted, no resources such as water (which grows the products) are wasted and that no CO2 emissions are wasted (electricity, vehicles, etc.). In short, with your help we are able to collect all this food that would normally be wasted and ensure that all these resources (which are not infinite) are not wasted. To give you an idea of the scale of the impact that the Equal Food Community has had over the last 2 years, here is our table:
