What to Do With Leftover Fruit at Work
- By Lex Flamm
- Reading Time: 4 mins.
It’s Friday afternoon, and you’re passing the office break room on your way out for the weekend. You pop in to grab a snack for the road and notice something strange: The fruit bowl still has fruit in it! Two apples and a banana recline there, waiting to be snapped up. By Monday, they won’t be fresh anymore—so what can you do to keep them from going to waste?
If you’ve been in this situation and wondered what to do with leftover fruit at work, this guide is for you. We’ve rounded up five ideas to save your office’s extra fresh fruit from the landfill, plus a pro tip that will help you prevent this problem in the future.
#1: Store Leftover Fruit in the Fridge to Extend its Life
Many fresh fruits — including apples, bananas, and citrus—have the best texture and flavor at room temperature. However, if you’re worried about them going bad after a week in the fruit bowl, you can pop them in the fridge! Refrigeration will add an extra 1–3 days to the fruit’s lifespan, keeping it fresh and flavorful through the weekend. Note that the skins of bananas will turn black during refrigeration, but don’t worry, the flesh inside is still sweet and delicious.
#2: Take Leftover Fruit Home With You
If you’re a manager, consider creating a policy allowing employees to take leftover fruit home with them at the end of the week. (You can also suggest this idea to your company as a way to reduce food waste.) At home, there are dozens of ways to use fresh fruit. You can bake it into a tart or pie, make freezer jam, freeze it for smoothies, dehydrate it for snacking, or whip up fruit popsicles.
#3: Offer Leftover Fruit to Your Janitorial Staff
If you’re a manager or can get managerial approval, consider telling your janitorial staff that they’re welcome to take home leftover fresh fruit at the end of the week. This will keep the fruit from going to waste and boost your cleaning crew’s health and well–being at the same time.
#4: Cut and Freeze Leftover Fruit for Future Office Breakfasts
Take a few minutes at the end of the week to cube leftover apples, peel and chop extra bananas, and juice overripe citrus. Then, pop the fruits of your labor into the office freezer! The fruit will easily keep through the weekend, and you can add it to your breakfast the following week. Try stirring frozen apple chunks into your oatmeal before you cook it for an extra hit of sweetness and nutrition, or tossing the bananas and orange juice into a healthy breakfast smoothie.
#5: Compost Leftover Fruit to Save It From the Landfill
If you’re still wondering what to do with leftover fruit and none of the options above are available to you, you can compost it. Several cities, including San Francisco, require offices to provide compost bins where workers can toss fruit scraps, veggie peels, and more for commercial pickup. These compost programs transform food waste into a rich soil amendment for farms and gardens.
If your office doesn’t participate in a commercial composting program, consider starting a workplace program using this guide from the U.S. Composting Council. Larger offices may need to work with local waste haulers to coordinate composting efforts. But smaller offices can rely on something as simple as an electric composter in the break room.
Tabletop electric composters like the Vitamix Foodcycler or Lomi are small and easy to use, with convenient mess–free buckets for collecting scraps and filters that eliminate odors. They’re a great solution for places where other composting options aren’t available. Consider sending the finished compost home with employees, donating it to a local gardener or landscaper, or using it for in–office houseplants.
Bonus Waste Prevention Tip: Optimize Your Fruit Order
You may be able to prevent leftover fruit by adjusting your fruit delivery schedule. For example, if a portion of your team works from home on Fridays, you might want to avoid Wednesday or Thursday deliveries. Requesting Monday or Tuesday delivery instead will give employees more opportunities to enjoy the fresh fruit.
If your office still has a lot of leftover fruit after adjusting your delivery schedule, you may want to optimize the size of your order. Here at The FruitGuys, we recommend a starting order of two pieces of fruit per person per week. Then, as your team makes eating fruit a regular healthy habit, you can increase your order to match their intake.
Here’s how that math works out for a few different office sizes.
Our Large Harvest Mix box includes 50 servings of fruit. So we would recommend one large box weekly for a 25–person office, four large boxes weekly for a 200–person office, and 20 large boxes weekly for a 500–person office.
Next time you find yourself wondering what to do with leftover fruit on a Friday after work, don’t toss it in the trash. Instead, consider one of these solutions that will help prevent food waste and harmful greenhouse gas emissions. You’ll get more value from your order and help the planet at the same time.
