Peaches, apricots and cherries hang ripe from Utah trees this time of year. But the pulpy, sweet flesh of the unpicked fruit also covers the sidewalk.
Recent Utah transplant Chase Collins began to notice all the waste on his daily walks around Salt Lake City’s Sugar House neighborhood.
“I just saw tons of fruit trees and tons of stained sidewalks of fruit that has been left rotting.”
Collins loves fruit too much to just let it go to waste.
“If you remember back in school, those math questions about the guy buying six bushels of apples and 10 watermelons –– I am that guy.”
That was part of his pitch to the Sugarhouse Buy Nothing Facebook group, a place where people usually offer up free stuff to their neighbors like used sports equipment or old furniture. But Collins had a proposition: he would pick the fruit for free, as long as he got to eat some of it in return.
Since June, Collins has received numerous invitations to pick apricots, pears, peaches and cherries.
On a steamy July afternoon, Collins snapped sour cherries off the burgundy branches of a neighbor’s tree, plunking them one by one in a big bowl. He understands why owners may not want to harvest the trees themselves.
“I think what happens is after 10 years of eating cherry pie and cherry jam and raw cherries, you kind of get cherried out.”

It’s hard to say how much produce goes to waste on sidewalks, yards and in gardens around the state. Most data on national food waste focuses on commercial production, but the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that up to 40 percent of the country’s entire food supply is wasted.
Around Utah, a handful of organizations are trying to rescue the urban harvest on a larger scale.
Waste Less Solutions has its GardenShare program, where Utahns can donate their excess crops.
“When any kind of food goes to waste, it ends up in the landfill,” said Dana Williamson, the organization’s CEO and founder. “And when it rots it emits methane gas.”
Methane is 28 times more potent than CO2 when it comes to trapping heat in the atmosphere, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But there’s another good reason to rescue these crops.
“It doesn't make sense to throw away good food when there's people in need. And especially healthy foods,” Williamson said.
And Utah is ripe for the picking.
In a single growing season, Williamson said Waste Less Solutions can receive up to 5,000 pounds of produce from its gardenshare program alone. That harvest is then distributed to partner organizations like soup kitchens and food banks.

The Green Urban Lunch Box has its FruitShare program where tree owners pay for harvesting services. The fruit is then divided between the owner, the volunteers who pick the tree, community-supported agriculture boxes and other local groups.
“It is pretty labor intensive,” said program manager Katerina Bolliger.
“One tree, depending on how tall the tree is, how much fruit this tree has, how many volunteers I get with me, [harvesting] can range anywhere from two to six hours.”
Both Waste Less Solutions and the Green Urban Lunch Box can only meet so much demand.
“We do have amazing volunteers,” Bolliger said, but she’s still limited to about “four harvests a week.”
Which means there is still plenty of fruit to go around.
“I mean for Salt Lake, I will say it's a great region of the U.S. for fruit,” said Jeff Wanner, board of directors president of the food mapping resource Falling Fruit.
Their website shows where to find fruit trees and edible plants in public places across the globe, from mangos in Manila to walnuts in Istanbul.
“You can pinpoint your location, and you will see little dots on the map that are our trees or other food sources.”
It then displays the kind of plant, its growing season, yield and whether it’s on public property.
The data is crowd-sourced or comes from public databases, which Falling Fruit then cleans up. There are thousands of trees, bushes and more mapped throughout Utah.
When fruit hangs over a public sidewalk, Wanner said you can technically pick it, but if the plant is located partly on private property it’s always best practice to ask.
And if it’s Chase Collins who walks by, it’s a good bet he will.
“I encourage people to go walk around the neighborhood and don't be afraid to knock on doors and ask people if they are using their fruit because I think that way we can ensure that as little fruit goes to waste as possible.”