Transcript:
Goggy Davidowitz, a researcher at the University of Arizona, is using the sun to help prevent food waste.
Many perfectly good fruits and vegetables are thrown away at farms or ports of entry. Sometimes the market is oversaturated. Other times, the produce has minor imperfections.
Davidowitz: “Splotches on them, or they kinda don’t look good … and so people don’t want to buy that.”
Davidowitz wants to preserve this produce by drying it. Then it can be used to make packaged food, fertilizer, or animal feed instead of being tossed.
He’s designed a drying tower that looks like a tall greenhouse. As the sun streams in, heat rises and collects. Fans spread the heat around, and the crops dry out quickly.
Davidowitz: “We can dry it down in about five hours. Leafy greens like lettuce, basil, spinach typically take us about an hour, hour and a half.”
Keeping food out of landfills prevents it from breaking down into methane, a powerful climate-warming gas.
And dried produce is lighter than fresh produce, so shipping it is cheaper and uses less energy.
Davidowitz has now cofounded a company to build solar drying towers in places where a lot of produce is wasted – turning trash back into food with the sun.
Reporting credit: Ethan Freedman / ChavoBart Digital Media
