Being a food writer, photographer and recipe tester, more food than I care to admit ends up in the trash at our house. It’s something I’m super conscious about and make every effort to reduce our food waste. I’ve shared some ideas about how to reduce food waste in our homes – like meal planning, freezing ingredients, making creative salads, and composting! I also am lucky to partner with likeminded brands that are as passionate as I am about reducing food waste – like Fancypants Baking Coand Little Leaf Farms.
One of the things I love about Fancypants Baking Co is their passion for sustainability and reducing food waste. Fancypants Baking Co is a member of the Upcycled Food Association, and donates all food-waste to Farm-Powered to be turned into energy – how cool is that? Fancypants Baking Co is fighting food waste by partnering with organizations like Misfits Market, Imperfect Foods and Too Good To Go to rescue cookies that aren’t 100% perfect (but still delicious!).
Fancypants Baking Co also has a whole collection of Upcycled Cookies that incorporate ingredients that would’ve otherwise been wasted like Okara, the nutritious pulp left over from tofu and soymilk production! They also use coffee cherry, the husk of the coffee bean, and the nutritious pulp leftover from oatmilk production as ingredients in the upcycled cookies, how cool is that? They’re tasty too – the mini chocolate chip cookies are a favorite for Jane’s lunchbox!
Similarly, my friends at Little Leaf Farms are also putting sustainability at the forefront of their brand. Every step of their process, from the seeds to the packaging, was designed to limit the impact on the environment. I got to visit their greenhouses last year and learn all about the most sustainable ways they’re able to grow lettuce, like using biological controls in the greenhouse instead of pesticides, harnessing rainwater and solar power, and growing the lettuce with their hands-free system so they don’t have to wash the lettuce in chlorine-based cleaners (ick!).
One of the biggest ways that Little Leaf Farms helps reduce food waste is by also reducing the distance the lettuce travels to stores. Their lettuce is grown in New England and is usually delivered to stores within one-day of cutting it, to maximize freshness! The obvious benefits of that are that fresher lettuce is tastier, greener, crunchier and more nutritious. But fresher lettuce is also way better for the environment — 95% of lettuce in the U.S is grown in California and Arizona and is shipped over 3,000 miles before it reaches our shelves. That’s quite the journey (and a whole lot of fuel) to get leafy greens on your plate.
Partnering with brands like these is a small way I’m trying to reduce my impact on the environment, and you can read lots more ideas about how to reduce food waste in your own home on my reducing food waste blog post!
Note: This post was created in partnership with Little Leaf Farms and Fancypants Baking Co. All opinions, images and content are my own. Thank you for supporting brands that support this site.
