Hey fam,
This week I learned about Ugly Potato Day which just gave out the largest fruit and vegetable donation of all time.
The idea came from Tyler Heppel, who realized most people don’t want oddly shaped or blemished produce, so even though they taste just as good as their beautiful counterparts, they often go to waste, ending up in the landfill and emitting heat-trapping methane into the atmosphere.
So in 2022, Tyler sent an open invite for anybody to come to his family farm and pick up the ugly produce for free.
Just 12 people showed up that first year, which did reduce some waste, but he knew it could be much bigger… So he kept growing it until this year’s event which had more than 30,000 people participate just outside of Vancouver, Canada.
25 farms, the majority local to the area, donated funky-looking carrots, apples, cabbages, potatoes and more ugly yet perfectly good fruits and veggies to combat food waste, help the local community get fresh quality foods for free, and foster a relationship between farmers and their neighbors.
Guinness World Records even showed up, weighing all of it and officially deeming it the largest fresh fruit and vegetable donation in 24 hours ever at 543,000 pounds.
Would you choose an ugly fruit or vegetable next time you shop?
What Else is Going Right in the World
🗳️ Voting opened up for the Invertebrate of the Year 2026, a fun contest to bring more awareness to these creatures that are often overlooked. Last year’s champion was a waterbear or tardigrade measuring less than 1 millimeter long, and almost miraculously can survive unbelievably extreme environments. But vote for this year’s winner quickly, since it ends on August 16th!
🏷️ AI-generated content is now legally required to be labelled in the European Union, in an effort to reduce the massive amount of deceptive and manipulative content being put on the internet. Companies face fines up to 3% of annual revenue or €15 million if they don’t follow the rules and properly disclose content made with AI.
🧑🚒 74 brave firefighters from Australia and New Zealand are true heroes by coming to the US to help fight wildfires, spending five weeks away from home to share their skills and knowledge in fire suppression. It’s desperately needed: the US is at its worst level of wildfire preparedness, as the people in charge are failing us while fighters are spread thin and resources are becoming too strained. Thank you to these brave folks for their camaraderie and help, and let’s also make sure our elected officials prioritize policies to limit climate-fueled fires. (Watch my recap video made in partnership with Climate Power)
🧑🧑🧒🧒 41,000 people joined a Facebook group in Pennsylvania to take down a data center. Started by a woman named Karen Feridun in January, the massive group is now working together to call and message their representatives, support moratoriums, and discuss strategies to protect the community.
🔭 Out of this world: the James Webb Space Telescope revealed dust and water surviving on a star near the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole, a very extreme environment. “Even under the harsh conditions… stars of this kind can indeed produce dust and other materials, which will help create future generations of stars and planets.” Take a look at this stunning picture above and remember how vast, mysterious, and incredible the universe is!
📲 New Jersey is tackling social media addiction in kids via a new law that will kick off next year with many regulations. Some of note include: restricting the use of children’s data, limit discovery of children’s accounts, banning platform notifications between 8am and 4pm on school days, and more efforts to regulate the social media industry which has largely had free reign.
Our Community
👚 Darcey reached out to let me know that before Adam Root created his washing machine microplastic filter (that was covered in last week’s newsletter), Mojca Zupan invented one called PlanetCare. This similarly attaches to existing machines to prevent tiny plastic fibers from entering waterways, but impressively, they collect and recycle the caught fibers too!
That’s it for this week. If you saw a good story that I missed, please leave it in a comment so we can keep learning and taking action together. Thanks for being here, and have a great weekend.
- Jacob
This newsletter was written by Jacob Simon. Over 1.5 million people are in our community across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. You can say hi on LinkedIn, or by hitting reply. Brand illustration by Andrea Miralles. Thanks for helping spread some positivity, and see you next week for more.
I pick up 'ugly' produce (along with timed out leftovers and prep choppings) every day for Animal Food Rescue.
Some days it is 200-400lbs of stone fruit with a dime sized spot on them...sigh. Luckily I have a cadre of homesteaders who juice and preserve the same. Otherwise, the livestock have a bit of a sugar high some of the summer. DM if you want the flyers we've had Veterinarians review for food producer education.
Always good to hear from you, Jacob! (and from your followers!)