Amy Keller, Co-Founder and CEO of Pure Plus+ and FAVES, and an Ursa Nova Brand Partner, shares how her experience as a seven-time Ironman athlete and a climate activist led to the creation of the first climate candy from imperfect fruits and vegetables.

We are excited to have her products, FAVES, on our marketplace!


When I founded Climate Candy, I was determined to create a business that could contribute to the planet and positively impact people’s lives and health while still allowing the indulgence and enjoyment we get from candy. 

The first thing we've created at Climate Candy are FAVES, a candy born from my sweet tooth and a deep desire to save imperfect fruits and veggies after visiting the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

My background is uniquely suited to FAVES – my family is Spangler Candy Company, and we make two billion DumDum lollipops every year. I am an avid health and wellness enthusiast, a seven-time Ironman, and climate activist, so I set out to combine my passion for sustainability and health with the family business by creating a candy that's good for people and the planet.

Climate Candy rescues unharvested fruits and vegetables from farms and gives them new life as FAVES. Unharvested produce wastes vital energy and contributes to climate change. 25% of perfectly imperfect produce goes unharvested. FAVES offers full servings of fruits and vegetables – this is stealth nutrition at its finest. We turn problems into candy!

FAVES - Climate Candy

FAVES is a “climate candy” made from upcycled fruits and vegetables and provides real nutrients from produce. Each candy contains vegetables including pumpkin, sweet potato, carrots, and beets. Each serving of FAVES offers a full serving of fruits and vegetables. About 90% of Americans do not eat their daily servings of fruits and veggies, so FAVES make it easy and fun to add more produce to people’s diet. 

We are dealing with excess, imperfect fruits and vegetables, and their shelf life as a fresh product is short, so coming up with a process to preserve the nutrition and extend that short shelf life is critical. Frozen products can be cost-prohibitive, so there's a growing interest in developing cost-effective preservation methods capable of minimizing degradation and retaining the nutritional content of the original fruits and vegetables. With all this in mind, we developed our supply chain of veggies and fruits, which have all the qualities we need for our products’ long shelf life and high nutrition.

It's key that we track the carbon footprint and sustainability of our supply chain, the health of the ecosystems that provide our ingredients, and the health of our employees and consumers throughout this process. At Climate Candy, we're solving big problems, one sweet at a time. 

The Farms

Climate Candy works with farms to get a hold of imperfect produce that would otherwise go to waste. Our goal this year is to upcycle 2 million imperfect fruits and vegetables from farms, and every year after to double the amount saved.

Buying directly from farmers helps people - our purchases allow small growers to make a higher economic return on produce while supporting environmentally-friendly farming practices. 

Fruits and vegetables are the most wasted product and have the highest climate impact, which is why we felt the need to make FAVES.  Simply put, we're turning the world's problems into candy. I hope you can give FAVES a try, and let me know what you think! 

To get involved or learn more about this work, please visit: www.climatecandy.com

Amy Keller is Co-Founder and CEO of Climate Candy, the creator of FAVES. Keller believes where there is a vision the best way to predict the future is to create it yourself. She has never been satisfied with status quo and Climate Candy is a catalyst for change. Keller has spent her career working on environmental initiatives on climate change and is a 7 time Ironman triathlete.

Contact Amy at:  amy@climatecandy.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Check out Climate Candy here on Ursa Nova and get your delicious pack today!

Written by Ursa Nova

More stories

New Brand Partner Annoucement - Opok!!

We are so excited to annouce that Opok has joined our marketplace at Ursa Nova! Here is a little bit about them as told by the Founders of Opok the...

🌎 Earth Day at Ursa Nova 🌎

Climate change is a global issue that becomes more pressing each day. Appropriately, you will see a barrage of news reports, scientific articles, a...