City Fruit has launched its second Save Seattle’s Apples campaign, to reduce food waste and educate people about the health of the city’s urban canopy.
City Fruit volunteers harvest unwanted fruit from neighborhood trees to give to food banks and other food programs rather than letting it go to waste.
In 2014, City Fruit was forced to compost over 12,000 lbs of fruit harvested from Seattle’s urban canopy. This fruit was unusable due to insects, poor tree management, or neglect. After City Fruit’s first Save Seattle’s Apples campaign, the 2015 harvest resulted in only 3,000 lbs of compost, a vast improvement over 2014 that provides a huge boon to Seattle’s emergency food system. Through education, outreach, and direct hands-on assistance to tree owners and community members, City Fruit hopes to continue to lower this number in order to prevent food waste in Seattle.
From April through June, City Fruit will provide free pest barriers to Seattle tree owners and will host a series of outreach events in four Seattle neighborhoods focused on covering trees to prevent pests in public orchards and on private property. On Friday, May 20th at the Good Shepherd Center (N 50th St.) from 12 – 4 pm Seattle Cider Company and community volunteers will be celebrating this year’s campaign by netting the orchard’s fruit trees. City Fruit will also co-host screenings and discussions of the eye-opening film, Just Eat It: A Food Waste Story, in collaboration with Meaningful Movies. Free pest prevention materials will be available at each of the five screenings.
Learn more about the Save Seattle’s Apples campaign the City Fruit website: www.cityfruit.org/ssa.
