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In the past recent years, several of our delivery points have closed to give way to real estate speculation and many other collective spaces have been transformed into hotels or luxury housing. In the last year, stories of members who are forced to give up Fruta Feia and leave Lisbon because they cannot afford a house in the city are more and more frequent. Fruta Feia brings fruits and vegetables from the countryside to consumers who live in the city, but who will live in the city?!

And it's not just that, it's the way how things are done. Fruta Feia ensures its non-profit consumption in the city - the revenue from the baskets is to cover costs, whereas the measures announced for housing, instead of protecting those who inhabit the city - limiting rents and installments, blocking evictions, not encouraging foreign money demand (through visas for digital nomads, non-habitual resident status, golden visas with a different name, tax exemptions for large investment funds, etc), continue to prioritize the profit of banks and large economic groups. In the food sector, it's more of the same: the 6% drop in VAT on some essential goods (where inflation ranges from 20% to 65%) is yet another maneuver to not affect supermarket profits to the detriment of protecting people. As we are the proof that things can be done in a fairer way, we feel it is our duty to repudiate this social model in which profit is made at the expense of people's lives, in two forms that are essential - housing and food. Because we are moving away from this model of maximizing the profit of a few at the expense of the misery of many, and in solidarity with all the communities and associates who are losing their homes and space in the city, tomorrow we are fighting for a HOUSE TO LIVE IN!

9 years ago we were arriving at Intendente with a fully loaded van, not only with ugly fruits and vegetables, but also with hope for a fairer consumption model. That van is today a fleet of 4 vans that turns that hope into a reality in the Lisbon and Porto regions. We are 8800 consumers, 320 farmers, 16 workers, 500 volunteers saving 22 tons of ugly fruit every week!

On this anniversary, in a context of crisis in production, we celebrate to the fact that we managed to raise the purchase price for farmers, contrary to large economic groups that are profiting millions of euros at the expense of reducing consumers purchase power and crushing producers, who face an exorbitant increase in production costs. And, in the context of the climate crisis, we celebrate to having avoided the waste of 4230 tons of food, the equivalent to 140 soccer fields in terms of land, 1850 Olympic swimming pools in terms of water, 6060 MWh of energy, and to having avoided the emission of 3765 tons of CO2 equivalent of greenhouse gases derived from the decomposition of food that is not consumed.

We are no longer a hope, we have been implementing a socially, economically and environmentally fairer model of consumption for 9 years!

Congratulations to all of us, and let the Fruta Feia decade arrive!

“Don't forget to leave the strawberry box here” is a phrase that most consumers will be tired of hearing us say. When we say strawberries, we say blueberries, baby kiwi, physalis or even mushrooms. Well, here's the explanation of such insistence.

The little boxes where we place the most fragile products in our basket are reusable. This choice was made with an ecological purpose: to have an alternative to disposable plastic containers and to minimize the environmental impact of our activity. At the end of each delivery, these little boxes (which are made in Portugal) are stored in our selling points and are reused when assembling our baskets for the following week. Unless associates take them home with them.

This has been happening regularly, which forces us to make new purchases of boxes and exactly what we didn't want to do - spend more resources than we needed to.

“I'll bring it in next week” is a common phrase we hear at our selling points, but it's not a solution. The number of boxes we have stored at each delivery point is based on the number of consumers who pick up baskets there. And we need this material at 2:30 pm when the baskets are assembled and not after 5 pm when they already have to be ready to be sold. In short, if all associates take the boxes home with the intention of returning them the following week, we will run out of boxes in which to put the fragile products on the next delivery.

That's why we insist so much on consumers to leave their little boxes in the selling point. Because we may be lacking immediately and because we want to maintain an operating model that results in the lowest possible environmental costs.

We have saved more than 4,000 tons of fruits and vegetables from going to waste!

Avoiding the waste of fruits and vegetables also means avoiding the waste of resources spent on their production - soil, energy and water (1780 Olympic swimming pools!). It also means avoiding greenhouse gas emissions from the decomposition of food that is not consumed. In order to monitor the environmental impact of our Cooperative, we have included in the header of our website a counter of valued resources and avoided emissions.

On a social level, these 4050 tonnes meant putting more than 1.6 million euros in the hands of farmers!