Amy Keller, CEO of Climate Candy, makes Faves fruit chews out of “perfectly imperfect” fruits and vegetables. The goal is to reduce food waste. About 40% of food is wasted globally, often winding up in landfills, where it rots and produces methane, a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere. As part of the Spangler family, which makes Dum Dum lollipops, Keller realized a few years back that she could use her background in candy to make a difference. “Candy is a $10 billion industry,” she says. Using industrial machinery and equipment, she makes fruit chews at a mass scale. Climate Candy estimates that it rescues over 1 million fruits and vegetables a year.
PIX: Food pouring off truck. Farmers harvesting, landfills, etc.
Amy: The number one issue around fighting climate change is food waste. 40% of food is wasted globally. Some of it's ending up in piggeries, livestock, landfill; places that it's not helping from a human health standpoint, or the environment.
TEXT: Nassau County Candy Fair, Long Island
L/T: Amy Keller - CEO, Faves
PIX: Amy walking into the fair and chatting to visitors at her booth.
Amy: Hello, sir. How are you? This is Faves, my climate candy, and it's made of imperfectly perfect fruits and vegetables.
PIX: Faves candy animation.
Amy: It tastes like strawberry and cherry starbursts. Faves, our fruit chew candy made out of upcycled fruits and vegetables. You get your servings of fruits and vegetables through something as easy and accessible and affordable like candy. And you don’t realize that you're doing something good for the planet.
TITLE: Climate Candy
Amy: My family is Spangler candy company, and we make two billion Dum Dum lollipops every year, along with many other nostalgia candies. I used to make my own hybrid Dum Dum flavors. I would put one in each cheek, so I used to like putting lemon in one and lime in the other.
PIX: DC capitol.
TEXT: As a student, Amy: spent summers working on congressional campaigns in Washington, DC.
PIX: Montage of hurricanes, fires, tornadoes....
Amy: Within all the issues of the day, climate change, that became something that I really cared about.
TEXT: Amy realized she could use her background in candy to make a difference.
Amy: Candy is a $10 billion industry yearly in just the US. So you can make a big change. I knew you can't start a candy factory out of a garage, because you can't do anything small in the candy world. If we're going to make a real change in the world and we're going to get the bigger contracts, it's gotta be something where I can make millions at a time and hundreds of thousands of packs.
TEXT: At first she tried to source surplus produce directly from farmers.
Amy: Across the board, farms are all the same. They're all having high wastage. It's literally just the dimensions of the fruits and vegetables that don't work with grocery stores.
TEXT: Food has to look perfect or grocery stores won’t take them.
TEXT: Food waste makes up to 8% of global greenhouse emissions.
Amy: We wanted to work with farmers in specific areas, so our transportation footprint would be lighter because we didn't wanna be trucking things across the country. It's called climate candy.
PIX: Packing truck with melons.
TEXT: Amy soon discovered that fresh vegetables were too perishable to work with at scale.
Amy: It needed to get to a point of becoming something that had higher shelf life.
PIX: Amy visiting candy factory.
TEXT: New Jersey
Amy: All right, I think we’re ready to go. We’ll see. Blueberry, raspberry, cherry, what are we doing today?
Joe: Cherry strawberry today.
Amy: Cherry strawberry. The classic. Perfect.
PIX: Amy and Joe on platform high up over the factory floor
Joe: The machinery is right underneath, and we have enough of a workspace here that we can do what needs to be done, combining flavors or just metering it.
Amy: Amazing.
Amy: That's when we came in and said, why can't it be an ingredient and making it into puree or powders?
PIX: Amy and packer walking through the plant.
Joe: I love this when you can see the powder going in.
Amy: It’s amazing.
TEXT: The basic powder is made from root vegetables.
Amy: After it becomes a powder, a puree, a juice, we make it into Faves.
PIX: Back at Candy Fair with man in blue maple leaf shirt again.
Amy: Here, try one. It tastes like peach and mango, but it’s carrots and beets and squash and sweet potato and pumpkin. So you’re eating your vegetables right now.
Amy: We consider Fave as a candy because it has that sweetness that offsets your sweet tooth and we advertise it in that way. We're trying to say, look, you have to eat 5-8 servings of fruits and vegetables daily. And for them to recognize that there's a way for them to do it in a fun way.
PIX: At Candy Fair. Woman tries candy.
Amy: Try one. Just try it, try it! See what you think.
Amy: We’ve learned over the years that people love the fact that they're rescuing fruits and vegetables
Woman: Really good. it’s not too sticky.
TEXT: Climate Candy has rescued over one million fruits and vegetables a year.
Amy: If something that you build has synergies with your mission, your vision, your values as a person, it makes it very easy to wake up in the morning and say, I'm making that change, and I know that the world will be better off if I succeed.