This invisible, protective coating on fruit and vegetables fights food waste

Stacked on a shelf at a Kroger gro­cery store, these avo­ca­dos look like any oth­er avo­ca­dos. But each fruit is coat­ed in an invis­i­ble, edi­ble, plant-based coat­ing that acts as a hid­den weapon against food waste.

Apeel Sci­ences, a start­up found­ed in 2012 with a grant from the Gates Foun­da­tion, is begin­ning to remake pro­duce sec­tions in a bid to tack­le one of the world’s major sus­tain­abil­i­ty chal­lenges: Each year, rough­ly a third of the food that farms grow is wast­ed, wast­ing water, fer­til­iz­er, and ener­gy along the way. If food waste was a coun­try, it would be the third largest emit­ter of green­house gas pol­lu­tion in the world.

For fruits and veg­eta­bles, Apeel founder James Rogers real­ized that a sim­ple coat­ing could extend the life of food. The coat­ing itself is derived from food and slows down both how fast the item los­es water and becomes oxi­dized. It’s able to make fruits and veg­eta­bles last as much as four times as long.  The prod­uct is the win­ner of Fast Company’s 2019 World Chang­ing Ideas Awards in the Food category.