Fruitleather Rotterdam

Info

Fruitleather Rotterdam is currently developing a new, eco- friendly process that converts leftover fruits into durable, leather-like material.

Geschiedenis

We are Rotterdam based designers, recently graduated at the Willem de Kooning Academie in Rotterdam. Together we are multidisciplinary working on social issues.

Resources are becoming more and more scarce. This is the result of the way we are taking advantage of our planet. In this project we created a solution for one of the worlds biggest social issues, food waste.

Our vision here at Fruitleather Rotterdam is not only to spread awareness of the food waste issue, but also to show how waste in general can be used in a positive way.

Every Tuesday and Saturday Rotterdam enjoys its Market. This is the biggest outdoor market in the Netherlands and it also happens to generate the largest amount of fruit waste as each day with approximately 3500 kilos of rejected fruits. Rejected produce includes, for example, an imperfect mango or some squashed nectarines. To dispose of the trash, it costs the stand owner 12 eurocents/kilo. Therefore, some market vendors are tempted to illegally dump their waste in order to cut costs. They see the foods as trash and bin them.

But food isn’t trash, you just need to find a different purpose for the resisting material. We used our design background to come up with a solution.

Chefs use different technics to create wonderful flavor experiences with fruits and vegetables using them to garnish their plates. One of those technics is to mash, cook and then dry fruits to make them into a candy like piece of fruit called "fruit roll-ups".

By producing this on large scale with the unsellable fruits from the market, a new kind of material is created. This material can be used in many different ways, creating many different products.

We want to connect with producers, designers, government orginisations and research facilities to further develop our Fruitleather. Characteristics and qualities such as water resistance, tear resistance, durability and process ability are all factors which we want to improve. With these improvements we want to create the possibility to apply our material to a larger range of products. We will also need support in the field of logistics and the waste management cycle etc.

Please feel free to contact us for collaborations.
[email protected]

Stay tuned!

"Transforming leftover fruits into durable, leather-like material."