CGC's Ugly Produce Campaign for Earth Day 2020
For this Earth Day we want celebrate this beautiful planet that provides us with so much abundance. To celebrate we would like to take a minute to define beauty both in humans and nature. Unrealistic beauty standards are something that the average person deals with daily. We see flawless skin gracing the covers of every magazine. Women and men alike strive to live up to the ideal body image, perfect smiles, hair and skin. While over the last few years body positive branding is becoming mainstream, we still all feel the pressure to live up to societies expectations. We, at CGC think that it is the differences in people that make them beautiful, it’s the scars that show the obstacles they have overcome and it’s the little imperfections that make a person stand out and that is the real definition of beauty in our opinion. Nature is the same, nature’s beauty shows itself in canyons that are scars formed in the earth’s crust by massive floods or new growth after a fire that shows that it can overcome even the worst tragedies.
Many of us find solace in nature’s imperfect landscapes, we look forward to finding ways to spend time in nature to give us a break from everyday life, it is like food for the soul. A homogenized society is not something new, unrealistic beauty standards seems to sneak into every aspect of our daily lives. However, many of us don’t even realize that this societal psychosis has bled over into our food systems as well. Each year billions of pounds of produce are wasted because it doesn’t live up to our society’s beauty standards for fresh produce.
How crazy is that, that people are starving, and many families can’t afford to buy fresh produce, but we are leaving billions of pounds of fresh produce to go to waste because it has some blemishes or doesn’t fit the typical mold for the market standards. Not only is this wasteful it creates unnecessary hardships for our farmers who suffers huge financial setbacks due to unrealistic standards and causes other to use toxic chemicals that damage our earth’s ecosystems.
There are thousands of stores and restaurants who refuse to take any imperfect produce to other who won’t even pay half of the normal cost for it but these same stores and restaurants are only trying to appease us, their customers. It is up to us to work together to change market standards for produce. That is why we will be kicking off our Ugly Produce campaign this Earth Day, to raise awareness about this issue. We want to see your ugly produce in all its natural glory! We want to see your bruised and battered mangoes, your misshapen citrus, your root crops with odd appendages, we want to see it all. Help us show our communities that beautiful healthy and nutritious produce comes in all shapes and sizes and that there are even studies that show ugly produce can be more nutritious.
Our campaign will run from April 22,2020 to May 22, 2020 and at the end of the campaign the winner of the ugliest produce will receive $50 worth of seeds to start their own garden. There is no purchase necessary to enter and no limit of how many photos you can submit. Simply follow @cgcmaui on Facebook and Instagram, tag us in all your ugly produce photos and hashtag #uglyproduce. May the ugliest fruit or veggie win and Happy Earth Day to everyone!
