Jenny Du

Awesome.

When you pick a piece of fruit off a tree, it's like a ticking time bomb.

It's literally this living and breathing thing that's slowly cannibalizing its own stores of energy and nutrients, just trying to stay alive until it ultimately gets eaten by microbes or some other animal like us.

Have you ever wondered why that is and what could be done about it?

My journey in trying to figure that out started in the spring of 2013.

I'm finishing up my postdoctoral research in chemistry at the University of Santa Barbara, California, and all that really means is I'm a huge nerd and I've been in school for way too long.

And I'm trying to figure out how to put all that training to meaningful use.

So two of my lab mates, James Rogers and Luis Perez, invite me to dinner.

But it turns out to be a pitch disguised as dinner.

And they opened by totally flooring me with some staggering stats.

A third of the food that we produce worldwide is lost or wasted before it ever has a chance to be eaten.

For fresh fruits and vegetables, that number is a half.

And waste is a problem at every single step of the supply chain.

From the farm, trying to get it to market, in stores, restaurants and in our homes.

And it's not just a waste of the food, it's a waste of the land, water, fertilizers, labor, energy, fuel, packaging and money out of farmers and our pockets.

If global food waste was a country, it'd be the third highest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the US.

For decades, all around the world, we've relied heavily on a surprisingly small number of ways to help fruits and vegetables last longer after harvest.

These have gotten us a really long way, but they also have their challenges.

Refrigeration is a massive energy suck, a significant source of emissions, and it's expensive.

It's unfortunately why a lot of places around the world don't have access to refrigeration.