#23 Food Waste
Fixing the world's dumbest issue
Read time: 5 minutes
In this week’s issue you will learn about a very stupid problem that’s having a huge impact on climate change: Food Waste
“Globally, if food waste could be represented as its own country, it would be the third largest greenhouse gas emitter, behind China and the US“ - United Nations Environment Programme
Top Food Waste News 🗞️
US ugly food brands join forces: Misfits Market acquired Imperfect Foods. They both source unwanted and excess groceries from farms and food producers selling them to customers for up to 40% off.
EU on food waste: The European Commission will propose legally binding targets to reduce food waste across the EU by the end of 2023.
Trash startup: Nest founder Matt Rogers launched a subscription startup that makes trash cans that turn waste into compost.
Let’s dive in 🧠
Some context about the issue
Around 40% of all food produced is wasted. That’s 2.5 trillion kilograms of wasted food every single year.
At the same time 1 in 10 people worldwide suffer from hunger.
The total, annual amount of food that’s wasted across Earth is equal to four times the amount of food that could end world hunger with immediate effect.
Just stop and think about that for a second.
How is this affecting climate change?
It takes a lot of resources to produce food, keep it cool and transport it. And when we throw it away because it goes uneaten it usually goes to a landfill. In the US 95% of discarded food ends up in landfills.
There it decomposes and releases huge amounts of methane which is 80 times more effective than CO2, ton for ton, at trapping heat in the atmosphere in the 20 years after release. Btw, I covered the topic of methane here :)
We are messing up the planet to produce food no one ends up eating. Isn’t it ironic?
Some more details about food waste
The food waste value chain has several parts and around 60% of the waste takes place in households according to the UN.
Also, not all food is wasted equally. More expensive food tends to get wasted less, but at least in the case of meat it has a much larger carbon footprint.
And here are some of the main reasons why we waste so much, especially in households:
We buy stuff without knowing if we need it.
Plate and fridge sizes and space to store food has increased significantly in the last few decades.
Poor planning before buying and bad organization of the food (by expiration date) after buying it.
But there’s good news!
Of all the climate related challenges, food waste is one of the easiest to solve.
And solving it will help mitigate climate change, reduce world hunger and help us save $940 billion of annual economic losses!
So here are the three main ways to fix it:
Better planning/forecasting: Supermarkets and restaurants can take advantage of analytics to keep their stocks as efficient as possible. Households can also do better scheduled meal plans and grocery shopping lists.
Recovery: Connecting restaurants and supermarkets with buyers so they can get food they are about to throw away at a much lower price, or even donate it.
Recycling: Using food waste to make bioplastics, energy, fertilizers, etc.
So if it’s so easy why is it still such a big issue?
Challenges
Surplus food stigma: There’s a widespread misconception that surplus food is not safe for consumption when it’s actually perfectly fine to eat.
Lack of knowledge: The fact that most waste occurs at households shows there’s a large say-do gap. We need to better inform people of the larger socio-environmental issues caused by food waste.
Visibility: We need to avoid the mistakes of using large plates and portion sizes and placing fresh food at the back of the fridge. Supermarkets also have to make their “soon-to-expire” offers more visible.
Top Food Waste Companies 💰
There’s so many, here’s a small map with a bunch of them.
Recovery apps: Every region of the world has its own app in the form of a marketplace that connects buyers with restaurants/shops that are about to throw away food and sell it at a very low price instead. Too Good To Go, Olio, Karma, Just Dabao, etc.
Food life-lengthening: Stixfresh’s stickers and Savefruit’s powder mix are both natural solutions that help make fresh produce last several days longer without affecting the taste, flavor or quality of the product.
Analytics: Companies like Divert, Copia, Shelf Engine or Choco are all leveraging analytics to make sure shops and restaurants optimize their food stocks and thus save money and reduce food waste.
Also, there’s many companies out there dealing with recycling, waste-to energy and many other topics related to minimizing food waste :)
❗Extreme knowledge area❗
Campaign about food labels: Too Good To Good put together this awesome campaign in collaboration with hundreds of brands to avoid the huge amount of food waste caused by the “Best before” labels on food products.
Waste-to-energy: A great video explanation to understand how food waste is turned into biogas and fertilizer.
That’s it for today, 1 climate tech topic in under 5 minutes.
Next week… Perovskites! 🤯
If you enjoyed today’s issue, the best compliment you could pay me would be to share it with one person who you think would benefit from it :)