The Central de Abastos, with more than half a million daily visitors, stretches across 320 ha on the eastern side of the Mexican metropolis. It is a wholesale produce market, but it is also a machine that feeds tens of millions of people every day. Unfortunately, it is also a huge source of food waste, with hundreds of tons of unsold vegetables and fruit consigned to dumpsters at the close of each market day.
Since 2020, the government-run Central de Abastos has pioneered an approach to redirecting some of that unused produce into the mouths of the hungry, through a program that has contributed to reducing the market's daily food waste by 24% and delivered almost 800 tons of food to soup kitchens.
In 2019, Mexico City officials estimated 565 tons of organic waste — everything from overripe fruit to onion skins and cut flower stems — ended up in dumpsters in the parking lots behind the Central de Abastos' beautiful produce displays every day. Government programs, including the soup kitchen donation program, lowered that total to 428 tons per day in 2022.
Source: npr.org