Eat doughnuts to save the planet and 37k tonne of unwanted bananas

Eat doughnuts and help save the planet – that’s the fun campaign from a Brisbane bakery trying to prevent millions of kilos of bananas going to waste.

Eat doughnuts and help save the planet – that’s the fun campaign from a Brisbane bakery trying to prevent some of the millions of kilograms of bananas going to waste on Queensland farms each year.

Popular bakery Nodo has teamed up with sustainability subscription service Farmer’s Pick to repurpose some of the 37,000 tonnes of bananas rejected by major supermarkets for being single rather than part of a bunch, misshapen, or uniquely different, such as those with multiple fruits within one skin.

Josh Brooks-Duncan co-founder of Farmers Pick and Kate Williams founder of Nodo have teamed up.

Their solution? To create banoffee doughnuts to be sold across Nodo’s nine Brisbane stores and kiosks.

“We were just really shocked by this statistic. It’s crazy,” said Nodo founder Kate Williams.

“It’s so easy for us to use imperfect produce because you’re blending it, your baking it, and the team at Nodo are very passionate about reducing food waste so we thought it’s a really fun way of spreading this message.”

The specialty bake features a banana doughnut base filled with caramel, dipped in milk chocolate and topped with banana custard cream and pie crumb, incorporating almost a whole banana per serve.

“It’s a flavour we’ve never done and there’s a massive cult following for banoffee and I think it’s one of our most delicious, decadent doughnuts we’ve ever done,” Ms Williams said.

Ms Williams hoped this would be just the first of many collaborations with Farmer’s Pick to save unwanted fruit and vegetables from going to waste and encourage people to see imperfect produce in a new light

“It’s about spreading the message in a positive way and getting people to think about their buying behaviour,” she said.