Hey Green Junkie,
What if everything we’ve been taught about food storage is wrong? What if I told you that your food is going bad quicker than it needs to because you’ve been told to store food incorrectly?
Improper food storage is a massive contributor to this planet's high amount of food waste and it can be avoided.
So today, I brought on Toni from Abeego Wraps to talk to us about how we should actually be storing our food to prevent food waste and make the food that we buy, last longer.
In this episode I will touch on the following:
- The issue with how we preserve our foods
- Why you should stop storing things in airtight containers
- Why composting isn’t always the best way to prevent food waste
- The actual cost of wasting food
- What to use to store your food properly
- Why food storage hacks don’t always work
If you love this podcast be sure to leave a review and share a screenshot of this episode to your IG stories. Tag @thisisstephaniemoram so I can shout you out and publicly say thanks.
Thanks for listening and being here.
Your green bestie,
Xoxo Stephanie
Hang With Toni
Previous Episodes Mentioned
#41. Slow and Easy Living With Emily Padan
#55. Eliminate Food Waste One Meal at a Time
#63. Reducing Waste in the Kitchen With Anne Marie Bonneau
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Wanna go the extra green mile? Binge (and download) my complimentary audio series to reduce your waste and learn how to consume less in just five days!
Produced by: Alecia Harris
Music By: Liz Fohle
LISTEN BELOW
TRANSCRIPT FOR EPISODE 65
Stephanie Moram 0:08
Hi Green Junkie it's Stephanie Moram and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Toni Desrosiers the founder and owner of Abeego, which are bees wax wraps. Abeego is Tony's love child born from the desire to live holistically, and a deep desire to distribute for good in her mission to keep food alive. She invented beeswax food wraps in 2008 and disrupted the billion dollar plastic wrap industry. Now the founder and CEO she leads and inspire community of nearly a million wholehearted pioneer households hell bent on ending food waste.
Stephanie Moram 0:53
You can head over to my Instagram and Tiktok @thisisstephaniemoram to follow along. If you want to reduce waste and learn to consume less in just five days, you can binge my complimentary audio series, the link is in the description. And don't forget to subscribe to the Green Junkie podcast on whatever platform you get your podcast. That way you never miss another green living episode.
Stephanie Moram 1:19
Hi, Toni, how are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm great. Thank you so much for coming on. I am so honored that you are able to take some time out of your schedule to chat with me about food waste.
Toni Desrosiers 1:32
Oh, I can talk about food waste all day long. Thanks for inviting me.
Stephanie Moram 1:36
I bet you can. So first up for those that are listening. I would love for you to just touch on what Abeego is you know I mentioned its food beeswax food wraps but can you just touch on it for a couple minutes of what exactly Abeego is.
Toni Desrosiers 1:51
Sure. Abeego came into existence when I asked myself “What if we just got food wrap all wrong?” From the 1950s we started to seal, trap and lock our fresh living food in airtight food wrap in an effort to keep it fresher longer. But what if we were wrong? What if we made it too airtight and we were actually causing it to spoil rot and get slimy the way you might be used to seeing your fresh food in your fridge. And so with a background as a nutritionist, a holistic nutritionist, I decided to investigate what food wrap could look like if nature could recognize it if it was made with all natural ingredients if it behaved more like appeal skin or rind that's naturally on your food. And with the convenience of the usefulness that we see in plastic wrap. I wanted it to be as useful as plastic but completely natural. And Abeego was born. And it's a beeswax food wrap that's a hemp and cotton blended material. And then we infuse it with our formula of beeswax tree resin and jojoba oil. Very simple. And the beauty is that it is protective. Like we need for our food, but it's breathable, it's not air tight.
Stephanie Moram 3:07
So you're speaking of airtight. So what is the problem with storing food in plastic, whether it's plastic wrap, or just like a regular plastic container.
Toni Desrosiers 3:18
So at Abeego we obsess over fresh food, that's our jam. That's what we love. Like the fresher the better. And the reality with fresh food is it's not fresh, it's alive. It is a living organism that is emitting gases as it breaks down, it's losing moisture as losing nutrients. And unfortunately, in an airtight material, the gas that that fresh food would naturally admit turns to condensation. And you've seen the condensation on the top of your containers and in your your plastic environment. And that condensation actually falls back down onto the food and creates like a really awesome environment for mold and bacteria. And that's why you see slimy rotting, gooey, gooey, fresh food when it's in an airtight environment.
Stephanie Moram 4:06
And this would be true if you decided to use like a mason jar with a top it would have the same sort of effect as it wouldn't in a plastic airtight container.
Toni Desrosiers 4:17
Yeah, if you leave it in a mason jar, like say you'd like make a mason jar salad or something and you leave it in there for an extended period of time for sure you're more likely to find that sliminess in your food. And that's an airtight problem that's not a fresh food problem.
Stephanie Moram 4:34
Right You know, when you open up and you you're so happy to eat a pepper like you cut up your peppers and you put them like in a container. And then I pick it up and like now it's going to the freezer. It's going to be in a stir fry now it's just not going to taste as good when it's like…
Toni Desrosiers 4:50
A little slimy at that point.
Stephanie Moram 4:53
Yeah, like it's slimy. So that's why it ends up in the in the freezer.
Toni Desrosiers 4:57
Yeah, exactly.
Stephanie Moram 4:58
Yeah, and so we're not putting we you know, if we want to keep our extended the life of our food putting in, you know, in an airtight container, not a great idea. So then if we just decide, hey, let's just throw that pepper in the fridge as is, or let's just throw whatever it is in the fridge, put it in a glass container, but we'll leave it open because it's not airtight, right? What's the problem with doing that?
Toni Desrosiers 5:24
So leaving your food naked, has a whole other host of problems. So what will happen is the food will dry out more quickly, it will lose moisture very fast, and you'll have kinda like a withering drying out food. Now, that may not be as unappetizing. As you know, slimy, blackened spinach. Withering spinach is still totally doable, right? We eat that. But as food loses moisture, it's not just losing moisture, it's losing nutritional value. So you want to protect your food and something that protects it from the the environment of the refrigerator, but it still allows it to breathe, so that you get the maximum nutrient value from your fresh food.
Stephanie Moram 6:08
Right? And to be honest, so I would always leave like my whole peppers, most of the time in the fridge, just like just throw them in the fridge, call it a day. And then after watching tons of your like reels on Instagram, I saw that you could create like a pouch. Right? This is gonna be another question for you after we can create a pouch. So I started putting my whole peppers in like the huge rectangle, one rectangular one. And now my peppers like I opened up a bag. I think my peppers were from last week. And I opened them and they were still like they weren't soft. Like at all. I was like, yeah, like what just happened? Why are my peppers like, they're not going to be I knew they wouldn't be slimy. But you know how they lose, they're not as hard anymore, they get kind of soft. And that's when they end up in the freezer. And they're going to be in a stir fry. And so I cut them up, or red peppers to give to my kids. I'm like, wow, these are like a week old. And they're pretty much as fresh as when I bought them.
Toni Desrosiers 7:09
Well, they have raw water contents, they're still crispy and delicious. So you don't have to like dedicate them to cooked. I mean, like, here's the thing. We often say like, what if we got it wrong with plastic wrap? What if airtight wasn't the right choice. But I would take that a step further to be like, what if we didn't get it totally white, right with the refrigerator. The refrigerator was invented along the same time as plastic wrap the same principles of airtight were built into that environment. And we know that the refrigerator sucks the living moisture out of our food, like it's just so fast, which is why you protect it with something airtight. But now we just want to kind of be like in the middle ground between protective and breathable, so that you get those crispy peppers because you spent a lot of money on them and you deserve to eat a crispy pepper.
Stephanie Moram 7:58
Yeah, you know, organic food, they don't give it away. So I don't feel like throwing my pepper in the compost. You know what I mean? Like I want, I want to be able to eat it. So if we're not, you know, this is all about, you know, getting away from wasting food, right? Like your whole one of your your whole mission is like, let's start with food waste, like, let's stop, let's extend the life of our food as long as possible. And then if for whatever reason it's not as fresh as it is, then you can just I put my stuff in the freezer, it goes in the freezer, and then when I make a spaghetti sauce or whatever it is, instead of the compost. So growing your food in airtight containers not a great idea. Naked food, not a great idea. Composting isn't the answer to fight food waste, because it's still being wasted, right?
Toni Desrosiers 8:49
Absolutely. I mean, compost is better than the trash, obviously. And if something has to go in the compost, it has to, but I would challenge people to think like, maybe maybe it's going to the compost simply because we don't understand the right way to store it. And it doesn't need to be complicated. It doesn't you don't need to like put it in water. You know, trying to change the water out every week, put a plastic bag over that, say a couple prayers, you know, like it doesn't need to be complicated to store your food. The biggest problem that is under recognized with compost is all the waste under the compost heap and the impact that has on the environment. It's absurd.
Stephanie Moram 9:34
And so I know what you mean by that. Can you just touch on it like yes, we composted it, it didn't happen didn't end up in a landfill somewhere. But it might have ended up it goes into the compost, but we forget what went into creating that pepper.
Toni Desrosiers 9:51
Totally, so let's use an avocado as an example because I know people are out there tossing half avocados because your food storage mess That's a failed view, you haven't failed and failed by your methods. Or maybe you've eaten the entire avocado one sitting because you don't want to waste half of it. Or you're just you're, you're tossing it in the compost because it's black. And that avocado has traveled an incredible journey to get through to your kitchen, it has been grown in a field, like liters and liters of water have been you used to grow on it, people have human labor has picked it, select it, packed it, it's got on a truck that trucks been driven across the country to your grocery store. Once again, humans have picked it and packed it and put it on the shelves, and then you drive to your grocery store, you get the avocado, you bring it home, and then you eat 50% of all of the energy that went into producing it. And so the waste is everything that goes into creating that $2 Avocado, you're wasting $1. But the downstream effect of that is like I want to say billions the billion it's just so much money. It's crazy, and energy as hard on the environment.
Stephanie Moram 11:07
And I love this example because everyone has wasted and avocado in their life. Everyone, everyone like me included. And I think it's important for people to recognize it's not always just the waste that actually physically goes into the compost or landfill. And how you did that it's everything before that process. Everything was it's like it was done for nothing. We used all those resources. And now you're taking that avocado and putting it in the trash or the compost and was it all for nothing?
Toni Desrosiers 11:38
Totally. And you know what, like, in a big way really saddens me frustrates me and saddens me is the guilt that you feel when you throw that half an avocado away. Like nobody feels good about wasting food. We're not, we're not pumped about that. But the reality is, you have been set up for failure. This idea of airtight food wrap this that's been beaten into us through plastic wrap marketing for the last 65 years is fundamentally wrong. If you look at an avocado peel, it is not airtight. It's protective. And it's breathable, cheese rind protective and breathable. A lemon skin protective and breathable, airtight food wrap in the form of appeal or skin doesn't exist in nature at all. So it's not even your fault. You've just been totally failed.
Stephanie Moram 12:29
Right? And so you came up with the answer. You came up with the answer. And it's full circle from the beginning. If you want to waste less, you created something that is mimic mimic I can't even say the word Minh King nature, right? And the Beagle wrap is breathable, and use organic cotton, and all that to mimic nature. So we don't have to store our food and glass because I'm going to be honest, I've watched a gazillion videos on how to keep strawberries fresh. Put them in vinegar for two minutes and let them dry. Okay, strawberries never dry. Like I none of my stuff. And if they do, then they die. Like and I put them in the glass container. Do they stay fresh? like kind of a little bit but like it's not really they're not fresh? Like they were if I didn't wash them, you know what I mean? So I feel like this whole airtight thing you know, I've done it and it's just not working. Well it's not working for me.
Toni Desrosiers 13:33
And no, it doesn't work honestly just doesn't work. And it's this is the has been around the Abeego office because we just don't join TikTok for the heck of it, we're late, late to the game of TikTok. And we're going to be exploring these hacks because you're taught I mean, there we found a post, there's like seven to 10 different ways to keep a cucumber fresh. Sorry, 10 different hacks to keep a cucumber fresh. All you need is a protective and breathable environment. You don't need to wrap it in paper towels, you don't need to put it on the top shelf of your fridge. You don't need to, you know like it just the list goes on. And these hacks are fun and interesting. But they don't often work.
Stephanie Moram 14:21
And I do use a lot like I do use a lot and my juice consists of spinach, cucumber, lemons and celery. And I don't like slimy cucumbers. I don't know who does but I definitely don't. And so I ended up getting like the super big Abeegos and I made a pouch with it. And I have like the long Lebanese one so the pouch isn't long enough. I put them all in I think I can fit like six. And then I just put another one over top. And I put in that thread. I think I left them there because I was I didn't do it for a couple of days or something. And I went in I'm like, Oh, these are still really good. I was like a shock not like not doubting that it didn't work. I've been using beeswax wraps for ever. But I've just tried so many things. And the other problem I was having is I love glass, I hoard glass, I can't put glass and recycling. And what was happening is my fridge was full of glass. And that the shelf that is above where the drawers are in your fridge is literally like on an incline towards the middle of too much glass in my fridge. I'm like, so I had to like, I'm like, I can't use glass on my fridge anymore. Like I'm literally breaking my fridge. But like with the Abeego wraps, like, there's not really any extra weight. Yeah. And you can rely on everything. Yeah, and you can pile everything on top of each other. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, when I'm talking about whoever's listening about making a pouch, go to their Instagram. I don't know, maybe a month ago, I don't remember how long like scroll through the reels. And they do a really good reel on how to make a pouch. It's so easy, because I would like you to quickly touch on because it's somewhere Instagram, I read it while you decided not to make your abrigos into like pouches. You know what I mean? Where you just said, I'm just going to make one big piece. And I'd love for you to share why you decided not to make pouches. And like, you know, sew it all together. One probably because it takes a lot of time to sew.
Toni Desrosiers 16:23
Yeah, it's not easy to sew, it's sticky. So like you're gonna gum up your sewing, the sound of a sewing machine is just I can't like I couldn't put my team through having to sew all the way. And frankly, I am a really, really practical person. I don't have a mango peeler. I don't own an egg timer. I don't have gimmicky kitchen things. And I wanted my wrap to solve whatever problem you had, whether you needed a bag for your spinach, or you needed a really long one for your celery. I wanted to convert from a wrap to a bag and back to a wrap as you need it. So you don't need one bag for your cucumbers and one bag that's suitable for your berries like it just for me. It was ultimate versatility. That's why I did it. So we don't make a bag. But we have really good instruction so you can make a bag.
Stephanie Moram 17:20
No, I love that. It's practical. Like you said, instead of having, you know, five different types of sizes, like you just go by the different sizes and make your own pouch, and you can seal it by just rolling it over. So you'll probably think we're like, What are you talking about? Go to their Instagram, you will see how to make the pouch. Super easy to do. And when you don't need a pouch you unwrap it. And now you have a big a big wrap.
Toni Desrosiers 17:46
Totally. Yeah, there's always different ways to use the different sizes.
Stephanie Moram 17:51
No, and if you're looking to get an Abeego beeswax wrap, you need the big rectangle to make a really big pouch to put your lettuce to put your cucumbers and all that stuff. So I love them. I've been using them for years. And when they're not good anymore, you know after time they get like dull the coating comes off. Yeah, what do you suggest people do with them.
Toni Desrosiers 18:19
So when you've loved your Abeego to death, which you will, it will be worn out and that's time to let it go. You can send it off with a bang. You can cut it up into strips and use it for firestarters I use them in my garden for garden ties. There's lots of different functionalities I've even used old wraps that still have enough adhesive quality as a dusting cloth and they're amazing because they pick everything up. So there's lots of different ways to repurpose it. You certainly don't need to toss it. But you can compost it.
Toni Desrosiers 18:53
You can compost I recommend that you home compost to be go and the reason is you don't want because the material isn't recognized as a as like in every municipality as something that can be composted. If you throw it in with recognized compost, you could be tainting the whole load of compost so rapidly they're compostable. The fact is they will compost over time, but they're not. They're not municipality approved at this point. So don't throw any beeswax wraps in your home city pickup compost bin. They probably won't get where they need to go rather use it as a fire starter or home composted.
Stephanie Moram 19:37
And what what I've done is I have one like one of the small squares. Yeah, and so it doesn't really stick anymore and it's all like I've worn it out. So what I do is I use it to like wrap my toothbrush, like I used to rent my toothbrush my niece comes to visit and so instead of her bringing a toothbrush every time she comes, I have a toothbrush for her and I just had an old beeswax wrap that it's just like it's time to let it go. It's time to say goodbye If it's it's been good to me, it was time to say goodbye. But I didn't want to put in the capo so I kept it. So then now I just wrapped her toothbrush in it, it's there when she comes over to use it. So, like Tony said, there's just different ways we can use them. And the last thing I wanted to mention, because I love this is that, again, you're trying to fight food waste, but also waste with your business, right? Let's be honest, you're cutting up the beeswax. There's like strips here. There's strips here. You know, you're giving away for a while Weren't you like the leftover strips so people could use it as ties. But this summer you came out with a little campfire. Which is so cute. By the way.
Toni Desrosiers 20:36
Thank you. Yeah, I mean, it's been our goal since day one to be zero waste. I mean, as a result, we've heard it a lot of A B go waste. But we needed to find a way to put it all into the same thing because otherwise it's it's too much additional production, which is waste in itself right if you have to spend too much. So this summer, we launched our mini camp fire, which is basically like a little Campfire in a Can. It burns about four inches high. It still has that crackly campfire feel but it's very controlled. You use it outside in any setting the beach, the park your balcony. And it burns for about three and a half hours. And it's made from entire upcycled Abiko waste. So we are now a 100% zero waste production process which brings me immense pride.
Stephanie Moram 21:30
It's awesome. When I saw you, I was like I need to buy them. So I did of course, we use them this summer like we roasted marshmallows on it. Like it's not like a traditional like big fire where I have these like crazy marshmallows that you get from a big fire but like it did the job we made s'mores The kids loved it. My son loved to put it out by putting the top on and stuff like that. So it's really awesome that like you started this in 2008. And like, look where you are and like, you know 14 years later, I'm trying to do math in my head. 14 years later, here you are like, where you can say like, we use all our production ways. Like we're not wasting anything. That's like so amazing.
Toni Desrosiers 22:10
Thank you.
Stephanie Moram 22:11
So if people are looking to connect with you and you know a beagle, where can they find you and if they want to buy anything like where can they get the Abeego wraps.
Toni Desrosiers 22:21
So you can always buy it at Abeego.com and we do have a Black Friday sale coming up so keep your eyes out. It should launch sometime next week. We can be found on Instagram @abeego and also on TikTok @abeego_ because somebody has the Abeego name. But that's when you get for being late. So yeah, those are the kind of the places that you can find us on Instagram we're going to show you all the different ways that you can use and fold to be go and just some of our explorations with like urban foraging and food waste, Tik Tok, where you're going to be challenging all those hacks and putting them to the test and just giving you a simpler option and online you can buy all of our goodies and if you don't have all your Christmas gifts tied up – the campfire is pretty cool.
Stephanie Moram 23:13
No, I liked the campfire. So if you're listening right now and you're not taking notes, go to the description and I'll have all the links on how to connect with Toni and her team on social media and where to buy her apps because they're really really good. Like I'm like can be like a really skeptical person and I've been using the beeswax wraps but then when I really started following Abeego like on Instagram and all the reels, I was like, whoa, okay, there's like more to this than just like wrapping up my food and calling it a day. So, so much great information on Instagram. You. Yeah, it's been great. And thank you for chatting. This has been a great conversation. I know you're busy. You're running a big company. So thanks for chatting with me.
Toni Desrosiers 24:04
My pleasure. Thanks for having me. And let me know if you have any other questions that come up about Abeego. We're always here to help.
Stephanie Moram 24:11
Lots of questions. So if you're looking for more sustainable living inspirations I have other episodes you might want to check out episode 41 – Slow and Easy Living. Episode 55 is called Eliminate Food Waste One Meal at a Time and episode 63 Reducing Food Waste in the Kitchen With Anne Marie Bono who happens to be the zero waste chef. Please share this episode with your friends, coworkers, mom, dad, uncle, cousin seriously, anyone you could think of that would benefit from this information. Thank you so much. Stay connected with me on Instagram and TikTok @thisisstephaniemoram. And don't forget to subscribe to the Green Junkie podcast on the platform, your favorite platform, and you can download my complimentary audio series. You will find everything we talked about in this episode in the description. Thank you for listening and I'll see you next Tuesday green junkie
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