Sustainability-Themed Fashion Lines

If ever there was a marker of modern-day middle-class excess, it has to be a pillowy bag of lettuce leaves gone mushy before they can be eaten.  Most days, for the past six years, Hanneke van Linge, who is now managing director of the non-profit Nosh Food Rescue, spends her mornings recovering food from the Johannesburg Fresh Produce Market in City Deep and a small network of supermarkets in the city. She’s after food that is safe to eat but no longer fresh enough to entice consumers. “We have been conditioned to expect crisp at all costs and we need to start confronting why we think of food surplus as food waste or that some foods are for poor people and some food is for rich people,” she says.