Kaye, who oversees the kitchens
at renowned restaurants Blue Hill
and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, uses
the tough cores of lettuce heads in
salads or marinated as a side dish,
and incorporates the pale inner
leaves of celery hearts into spices
or stocks. “We talk about the nose-
to-tail approach to butchery. You use
everything on a pig,” he says. “[We
need to] apply that same approach
to vegetables and the whole farm-
ing system.”
Next, Baldor is planning to
take a hard look at the pallets and
boxes it uses to deliver products to
its customers. Supermarket-style
produce boxes are typically made
out of waxed cardboard, which isn’t
recyclable. Baldor’s McQuillan is
working on alternatives, and in the
meantime the company’s packaging
is used multiple times rather than
just being discarded. “Part of the
[goal] is recognizing that we can
do things differently,” he says. “All
companies should want to glean
the greatest value possible out of
their assets. We really need to make
change now.”
“I looked at the
product and said,
‘It’s food. We
need to treat it
as food.’;”
Next World-Changing Idea
dump—essentially producing zero
organic refuse. Vegetable leftovers
are bagged and offered to chefs
for use in stocks or sauces. Fruit
odds and ends are sold to juiceries,
which use them for cold-pressed
drinks. Scraps that aren’t suitable
for human consumption (such as
cantaloupe rinds) are made into
animal feed. Anything that falls on
the floor of the facility or arrives rotten is processed through a “
waste-to-water” machine, which turns
food into a slurry that can safely go
down the drain.
Baldor, which began as a New
York City fruit stand in the 1940s,
is also blending scraps into entirely
new products that it then sells in
grocery stores under its private la-
bel, Urban Roots. The items contain
what’s known as a dry vegetable
blend: a mix of 20 different veg-
etables that have been dehydrated
and crushed into a flourlike consis-
tency. It can take the place of wheat
in certain recipes, while upping the
nutrient density. Baldor has already
introduced gluten-free croutons
and bread crumbs that incorporate
the mixture, and stuffing will fol-
low within the next year.
The changes aren’t just good
for the environment—they have
also provided a significant boost
to Baldor’s bottom line. In addition
to saving money (hauling waste to
the landfill used to cost the com-
pany about 10 cents per pound),
the company is also generating ne w
revenue: Certain scraps, such as
carrot peels, are selling for as much
as 30 cents per pound. “There’s a
huge profit potential there,” says
Katy Franklin of ReFed, a nonprofit
that helps corporations reduce
food waste. “It makes financial and
social and environmental sense to
be addressing this. The biggest hur-
dles are awareness and training—
figuring out the right processes and
establishing partnerships.”
The partnership part is espe-
cially important, since somebody
has to actually buy Baldor’s food-
waste products. Many high-end
chefs are excited about the idea,
both because it’s good for the en-
vironment and because it chal-
lenges them to be creative. Adam
Hidden value
Baldor and its clients have come
up with inventive ways to use
scraps. Haven’s Kitchen, a café in
Manhattan, sweetens turmeric
tea with pineapple rinds. Baldor
turns dehydrated vegetables into
gluten-free bread products.
