In Australia, restaurant makes soup out of waste

Brothl is a soup kitchen that's using food commonly considered as organic waste on its menu.

Half of all edible food gets sent to landfill instead of being eaten — that's about 2 billion tonnes. We recently wrote about France's Intermarché supermarket, which is turning ugly fruits and vegetables into sellable soups and juices. Now Brothl is going one step further by using food commonly considered as organic waste on its menu.

Located in Melbourne, the soup kitchen wants to redefine what can and can't be eaten. According to the company, which is influenced by the 1930s research of Weston Price, there is a relationship between eating food that's past its best and an improvement in health and immunity from disease. As a result, the restaurant takes food that includes the 40-50 percent of goods considered to be organic waste that it says are perfectly edible.

Concentrating on broths, which enable any harmful bacteria to be boiled away, Brothl's menu includes ingredients such as rainwater collected from Monbulk farms, foraged sea vegetables, stale bread and the bones and carcasses typically thrown away by other restaurants. Aside from being a few days older than consumers may be used to, the produce is procured from high quality sources. For example, many of its bones come from the award-winning Rockpool restaurant.

Brothl aims to give customers nutrition that they can't get elsewhere, while cutting down on food waste by sourcing the produce that would otherwise go to landfill. Are there other ways that businesses could take the lead by serving up ugly or overripe — but edible — foods to consumers?