It’s the ultimate kitchen let-down: Your toast is prepped, your egg poached, and you cut into your avocado to find it brown, speckled, and mushy. Forlorn, you toss it in the trash (or hopefully, the compost bin) and take the loss. Your avocado toast isn’t the only thing that suffers in that scenario. Every time we throw away food, we’re also throwing away the resources that went into growing it. By the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s analysis, food waste is responsible for 8 percent of global emissions.

Let’s underline that: Food that never gets eaten has a higher burden on the planet than most developed countries do. Part of the reason why so much produce winds up in the trash is that it gets packaged in large amounts that make it difficult to use up. Plus, the “best by” date labels are confusing and misleading, and (unless you’re buying hyper-local) it’s getting to our kitchens long after it’s picked from the farm, so spoilage is imminent.

One possible solution to the problem of spoiled food is Apeel—a clear film that shields produce from the elements that cause spoilage. On average, the relatively straightforward solution doubles the life span of the fruits and vegetables it coats—using nothing but organic material. To make the product, Apeel calls on materials that would have otherwise gone to waste, such as tomato pomace, watermelon rinds, or grape skins, in abundance in the company’s Southern California home base. The resulting film, once applied, gives producers more time to handle and ship their produce while reducing the amount of waste in grocery stores too—saving money and headache through the supply chain.