A World We Dare to Imagine - Part 3: Appeel

Appeel is the name of my organization, with the purpose of reducing food waste in the food and agriculture industry by half through the upscaling of food, food products, and food waste that is typically deemed unpalatable in a restaurant setting. In restaurants, it is estimated that half a pound of food is wasted per meal, and approximately 85% of the food that isn’t used in a typical American restaurant is thrown out while only a small percentage is recycled or donated. Learning from sustainable practices (especially those of other cultures), however, it is clear that there is much that can be done about this exorbitant amount of food waste, and Appeel seeks to mitigate those effects to build a world that is not only waste-free, but also food-secure.

I am passionate about the work of Appeel first and foremost because I firmly believe in the mission. The world generates at least 3.5 million tons of solid waste every day, and our practices for handling that waste is far from ideal. Tackling the food industry wasrte is a small step to addressing the issue as a whole, and Appeel seeks to further its mission by expanding into other avenues in the future. I come from a family that does a lot of upcycling and reusing. When cooking, we use every part of the animal purchased from the store without fail. In my household, a bone-in, skin-on chicken thigh will later have the bone used for stock, and the skin fried as a tasty snack, whereas most kitchens will discard both, even if there is immense nutritional value to be derived from the discarded items. In other cases, watermelon rinds will be pickled, lemon and lime skins will be reused, potato and carrot peelings will be reused for stocks, and in general no part of our food goes to waste. Appeel seeks to take these habits and expand them to a larger scale, so that society at large can see the benefits of upcycled and reused food waste, not just a few households. 

The restaurant industry, as noted before, produces an immense amount of food waste every day. When an industrial kitchen peels a potato, a carrot, an apple, or a watermelon, is the food waste reused? In most cases, these byproducts will be discarded into the trash, ending up with the rest of the landfill. In some cases, they may have a composting protocol for food waste in particular. When a kitchen juices a lemon or a lime, you can bet that after the juice is gone, the lemon and lime peels will end up in the trash as well. That means that as massive as a lime is, the only content extracted from a lime will be roughly ¾ to 1 ounces of lime juice, and the remaining will become waste. That is not a lot of lime juice, and a whole lot of waste! Appeel seeks to make use of this food waste, which is often extremely nutritious even on its own. By gathering food waste from restaurant kitchens, Appeel seeks to upcycle them into snacks and other food products, reducing kitchen waste by a substantial amount in the process. Potato and carrot peels can be combined and synthesized with discarded shrimp skins to make a tasty fried chip snack. Apple skins, watermelon rinds, and lemon and lime skins can be combined into candy bars to fully utilize their nutritional properties. Dried and preserved bones from animals and fish, instead of being discarded, can be used to flavor stocks and broths. At the end of the day, there are countless uses for products that many restaurant kitchens consider to be “waste” that can, in fact, be reused and upcycled for new food products. 

Anima Mundi Development Partners should support Appeel because trash and waste creates a massive footprint on the Earth as is. Reducing food waste is one significant avenue in combating the waste issue in the world at large, and a sensible way to reduce food waste is by reusing the food products that were already going to be wasted anyway. Not only does Appeel reduce the problem of food waste, but it also helps fight against food insecurity in America and the world at large. If the snacks produced by Appeel are put in the spotlight, American households may also be inspired to reconsider the food waste practices of their own homes. Many households simply don’t even consider that watermelon rinds and shrimp skins are even edible in the first place. Anima Mundi’s support for Appeel would drastically increase its reach and help Appeel attain its mission, supporting a world ultimately rid of waste and food insecurity.