How Can You Profit From Vegetable, Herb and Fruit Scraps?

According to the food experts at finedininglovers.com, a culinary website: 50% of fruit and vegetables are wasted every year, and up to one-third of vegetables could be wasted in the preparation process alone.

This is a striking figure especially if you consider that hunger is still a problem in many parts of the world and the prices of fresh fruits, herbs and vegetables have been steadily rising over the years. It simply doesn’t make sense to waste these food scraps and other related plants.

We must also consider that vegetables, herbs and fruits are a normal part of the human diet. This is especially more so if the person is vegetarian. Even the our meatiest dinner has plant traces on it.

For example, our common hamburger has tomatoes, cabbages and other vegetables. Even the sauce we use for hamburger which is ketchup and mustard both came from plants. So, its safe to say that we consume vegetables, herbs, fruits in our every meal.

The easiest and almost always taken route of disposing these scrap plant foods would be to throw them in the garbage together with all the biodegradable and non-biodegradable things we no longer need.

But if you have a garden or an unused yard, you can turn these food scraps into compost which could then be used as a fertilizer. The good thing about this is that you could use this fertilizer in your own garden or yard.

If you are a fresh food processing business and produces a lot of food plant scraps, you could even go commercial and sell larger volumes of compost which could be a good source of additional income for your fresh food processing business.

But this kind of recycling business is especially helpful to gardening shops. These kinds of shops can just collect plant food scraps from food processing businesses and restaurants to turn them into compost that they can sell.

You can also distill you plant food scraps into biofuel. For more information on this, you could for example simply watch YouTube videos using the search keywords: “biofuel from food waste”.

You can even turn some plant food scraps to alcohol and wine. For more information on this, you could for example simply watch YouTube videos using the search keyword: “potato scraps to alcohol”. The method you apply to potatoes would be the same for other plant food.

On the upside, whether you use plant food scraps as biofuel or drinking alcohol, the same outcome happens. Plant food scraps are turned into fuel which could be used for many purposes like cooking, lighting and so on.

You can buy a home distiller online so you don’t have to go to all the trouble of making your own distilling machine. There are for example home distiller machines which can be bought in Amazon for less than US$ 100.

You can also distill you plant food scraps into biogas also. For more information on this, you could for example simply watch YouTube videos using the search keywords: “biofuel from food waste”.

The wonderful thing about biogas unlike biofuel is that biogas is more portable than biofuel. This has enabled some entrepreneurial people to make money out of biogas made from food scraps.

These people buy biogas bags which are made from flexible, gas tight material which are made out of plastic sheets and fabrics. They then go from house to house and deliver these biogas bags full of biogas. Although these biogas bags are large in volume, they are very light and easy to transport.

The good thing also is that you could make your own biogas equipment from common household products. For example, I built an experimental mini biogas machine using only a large bottle with a narrow opening and used plastic bags to trap the biogas.

There are vegetables, herbs and fruits that grow again even though you have already turned them into food scraps. For example, the top portion of a carrot (one with the branch) is usually disposed off in the food preparation process.

But you can plant this portion of the disposed carrot part right back into the soil or in the water. For more information you could simply watch for example YouTube videos using the search keywords: “carrot scrap growing in water”.

If you are a farmer, you would already know the multiplier effect of such a method. One disposed off part of the carrot can grow another carrot plant which would then grow more carrots and the process repeats again until you have a multitude of carrots.

But don’t despair if you’re not a farmer and don’t have a big plot of land to grow a multitude of carrots or any other regenerating food plants like potatoes also. You could have a small garden right in your windowsill and grow food plants for personal use and then replant them again.

There are already a lot of YouTube videos showing how to make delicious broths/soup from nothing more than plant food scraps. You can for example simply use the search keywords: “broth from plant food scraps” in your YouTube search.

What’s good about these plant food scraps is that they’re nutritious because they’re made from fresh scraps of vegetables, herbs and fruits (depending on your taste). All you need at the minimum is water and seasonings and you already have a delicious broth/soup.

You can serve this broth/soup in your own household or if you own a restaurant, you could serve them as a free or paid dish. This is especially so in Asian restaurants where broth/soup is served first as an appetizer in the rice themed meal to follow.

Alternatively, you can ground up scrap plant food into powder and sell them as food flavoring or instant soup. But it really doesn’t matter if the plant food scrap is powdered or chopped into very small pieces, all that is needed is hot water and some seasonings.

We currently have about a dozen hamsters as pets and from what I can observe, they are not picky eaters. They would eat just about any kind of food we give them including plant food scraps.

So for pets that have the same eating behavior as hamsters, plant food scraps is a marketable product. The same goes for chickens. They are also not picky eaters and would eat about anything edible. The diet of cows can also contain plant food scraps.

This means that a farmer can actually save money by collecting the plant food scraps from restaurants and other plant food processing companies. You can even do the collection process yourself and sell these plant scrap foods to farmers.

The good thing about plant food scraps is that they’re nutritious and are still relatively fresh which is good for the health of pets and farm animals or any animals which may eat them. Plant food processing companies can make money with this.

Vegetable shops and vegetable sellers for example peel/remove the outer layer of cabbages because the outer layer of cabbages don’t look as pleasing to the eye. This must be because they’re damaged during harvesting or transport.

I sometimes see vegetable shops and vegetable sellers doing this as they sell their cabbages and other plant food products. They then dispose the peeled outer layers of the cabbage in the garbage bin.

But I have seen television documentaries of scavengers from developing countries actually collecting these disposed outer layers of cabbages and using them for food. As you can see, these disposed of outer layers of cabbages have a use as food.

If only vegetable shops and vegetable sellers would save them in bulk and keep them clean by not disposing of them in the garbage bin, they would make a small profit from their efforts because there would be people buying these disposed of plant food from them.

Continuing with our discussion of peeled off outer layers of cabbages, another reason why they are disposed besides being relatively unpleasant to the eye is because they could also be more chewy as compared to the fresh inner layers of the cabbages.

But this problem can be solved by turning these peeled off outer layers of cabbages into powder form. This way the eater doesn’t have to experience the chewiness of the peeled off outer layers of cabbages.

These peeled off outer layers of cabbages now in powder form can be eaten by just about anyone including those with no teeth like newborn children and very old people. Thus, they have a big potential market.

Because these plant food scraps are already in powder form, they can be turned into fruit juices and shakes and can even be turned to porridge and as we have already discussed before: broths or soups.

Some parts of food plants tend to be thrown away because they may be chewy or their taste may not be as pleasing as compared to the other portions of a plant food. But food processing knowledge and machines can yet turn them into very useful products.

Plant food processing companies and restaurants stand most to benefit from these knowledge and machines because they produce a relatively high volume of plant food scraps. They can make good additional income from food scraps.

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