Kromkommer – Combating food wastage
One major reason why fruit and vegetables are wasted is the extreme focus on aesthetics. Approximately 10-20% of fruits and vegetables (FAO) are wasted because of how they look, not how they taste. Kromkommer (a Dutch wordplay on the words cucumber and crooked) was founded in 2012 with the mission to save all these fruits and vegetables that otherwise would be thrown away because of their appearance or overproduction.
"Neither too fat, too thin, or too damaged, nor too lumpy or too crooked. At the end of the day, who’s going to notice whether the carrots in your soup were crooked or not?"
Beauty is skin-deep
Fundamental to combating food wastage, according to Kromkommer, is to establish collaborations with other partners. To this end, the ‘Krommunity’ has come into existence, an association of parties across the whole of the food chain: from growers and restaurants to shops and, of course, the consumer. Kromkommer cooperates with all kinds of Dutch growers. They know their residual flows and know which vegetables they can expect at certain moments.
