Check This Out: Ice Cream Made From Food Waste

It's ice cream season! With Memorial Day weekend just 5 weeks away, your favorite ice cream places are getting ready for the hot months to come! But would you try out this new ice cream place that makes ice-cream out of food waste...?

Credit: David Paul Morris via Getty Images

According to the USDA, the United States throws out an estimated 30 to 40 percent of our food supply—the majority of which is still edible! To prevent perfectly good meal ingredients from getting tossed in the trash, Salt & Straw, an ice cream company based in Portland, Oregon, plans to launch a limited-edition menu this June featuring flavors made from rescued foods.

Salt & Straw—which has locations also in LA, San Francisco and Seattle—has partnered with local businesses and organizations like Urban Gleaners and the Portland Fruit Tree Project, both of which rescue edible, surplus food and give it to the needy, to create these unique treats!

Salt & Straw founder Kim Malek says, “If we were able to use that wasted food, we could wipe out hunger.” The company’s end goal is more about educating customers about food waste, and proving that “it’s possible to make something incredible and fun out of something that was going to be wasted,” according to Tyler Malek, Salt & Straw’s head ice cream creator.

June's menu at the ice cream shop will feature flavors including Second-Steeped Rum Spices and Apple Butter where they’ll make the frozen treat from spices used to make rum, and apples that were too bruised to sell at market.

Salt & Straw’s food waste-inspired ice cream series will run through June, and estimates that the seasonal menu will save around 2000 pounds of discarded food from ending up in landfills.