The food rescuers of RETTERGUT

Others have sustainable ideas, too… and put them into action. We are introducing the food rescuers of the Berlin-based startup enterprise RETTERGUT.

We cannot live without food, the German term for it is thus Lebensmittel (lit. “means for living“).The production of food consumes a considerable of the resources we use. The way our food is produced, however, is not very environmentally friendly.

A kilogram of cacao, for instance, requires 20.000 liters of water for the cultivation alone. Plenty of CO2 then results of transporting it around half the globe.

It is all the crazier that we don‘t even eat a third of our food, but destroy it. At the shop as at home, whatever is past its best before date is simply thrown away. That much we still notice.

A lot of food ends up in the bin

But a large amount of food is lost much earlier on, during cultivation, transport and production. Every third piece of food is wasted on the way from the filed to the plate. And what is worst: a lot is only sorted out because its look or shape do not conform to the standard, in spite of these items being absolutely fresh and at least as tasty. A bent carrot tastes just as well as a straight one. It has as many vitamins and has required as much work to grow. But it is thrown away, just like a total of 13 million tons of food here in Germany alone!

The food rescuers - ugly fruits

RETTERGUT administers to this food. They have contacted farmers and producers, importers and wholesalers and buy the not quite so posh pieces of food from them.

From them, the enterprise fabricates new, durable products like soups, spreads or fruit paper (fine fruit puree, which is applied ultra-thin and dried at gentle temperatures).

Another product is RETTERGUT chocolate. With every grade change in the production of chocolate, hundreds of kilogram of chocolate are lost. The machinery is “flushed“ with the purest chocolate. When production is switched from milk chocolate to dark chocolate, several hundred kilogram of a so-called “charge separation mass“ are produced to begin with. This is in fact a mixture of two high-quality kinds of food. Because of the ever-growing variety of different chocolates, more grade changes are required for the production lines, which results in rising quantities of mixed chocolate. The chocolate made of UT Z-certified cacao is rescued, produced carbon-neutrally and wrapped in compostable material.

from The food rescuers - 100% rescued chocolate

In this post you can read what we did with the rescued chocolate…

Supporting sustainable projects with each purchase

Additionally, one donates to other sustainable projects with each purchase. RETTERGUT supports other sustainable projects like the “GemüseAckerdemie“ (the German play on the words “tilling“ and “academy“ is not translatable), that starts right there. By means of tilling together in the schoolyard, the GemüseAckerdemie conveys to mainly children and adolescents where our food comes from and how much work it takes to produce. This increases their awareness regarding as well as their appreciation of our food. We think this is an idea that is as simple as it is ingenious.