the lab, Apeel has begun to see evidence that it will be able to quadruple shelf life—at which point it will have effectively matched refrigeration’s powers to slow produce decay. In other words, we’d get the same result from a coating made from food waste that requires very little energy for its one-time application as from the entire power-hungry and labor-intensive system we’ve built to keep our food cold. “That’s our North Star,” Rogers told me. “If you can do that, think about what it means for people who don’t have access to that infrastructure.” The
