It’s nearly midday at Suntastic Fresh produce in Frederick, and an assembly line full of workers are busy sorting through fresh tomatoes. Virtually everything that makes it this far down the conveyor belt is ready to eat, but 10 percent of it, as much as 12,000 pounds of product every day, could very well be thrown out. And that’s just for this one facility.
Produce can be ugly. Yellow peppers can look a little too green, tomatoes can have slight bruising, squash might be a little too big or a little too small. While beauty might be in the eye of the beholder, commercial grocery stores have objective specifications all their products must meet. Those pounds of produce that Suntastic removes from its assembly line just aren’t pretty enough.
“Throwing food away every single day is sad,” says operations manager Nolan Smith. “There’s a lot of hungry people out there.”
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