The Food Fight Podcast

Author: Matt Eastland, Lucy Wallace

Manufactured by: EIT Food

Distribution year: 2019

Language: English

Episode: Is there value in food waste?

Episode guests: Rob Wilson, Linda Grieder

Podcast description

A series of articles from EIT Food that examines the biggest challenges facing the food system, as well as innovations and entrepreneurs trying to solve them.

The Food Fight Podcast is a series produced by EIT Food that addresses the most pressing challenges facing the global food system and gives a voice to those who are working to address them.
Through interviews and conversations with entrepreneurs, researchers, innovators, and agribusiness leaders, the podcast explores topics such as sustainability, technological innovation, food security, waste reduction, climate change, and nutrition.

Each episode is a journey through concrete problems and possible solutions, telling stories of start-ups, companies and projects that are changing the way we produce, distribute and consume food. The aim is to inspire and inform those who want to understand how the food system will evolve in the coming years, focusing on the urgency of building a more equitable and sustainable future.

Episode Description.

In particular, the episode addresses food waste by showing how by-products, such as unsold bread, can be transformed from waste to resource. Throughinnovation, creativity and new sustainable models, change is promoted that goes far beyond the individual product. Guests on this episode are Rob Wilson, ‘Chief Toaster’ of Toast Ale and Linda Grieder, founder of RethinkResource.

Beginning with Rob Wilson‘s experience, strong data on bread waste are mentioned: about 44 percent of the bread produced in the world is not consumed, demonstrating a huge inefficiency in the supply chain, both environmentally and economically. From this very issue comes Toast Ale, a craft beer that uses leftover bread as a substitute for barley in the production of the drink. The bread is transformed into fermenting sugars through the brewing process; instead, one-third of the malt used is waste bread.

This project is an example of the application of the circular economy: food waste that becomes a new product, which in turn can be not only marketed, but also harnessed for outreach and support for actions against food waste. Toast Ale ‘s stated mission is to “disappear”: to stop the systemic waste of bread by eliminating the very necessity of their production. And their impact? The company’s profits go to fund the outreach activities of Feedback, the nonprofit organization founded by Tristam Stuart against food waste.

Then comes the time for Linda Grieder, who talks about the RethinkResource project and in particular the Circado platform, designed to connect companies and secondary streams so that they can be integrated as functional and profitable resources. The emphasis is on the possibility of generating economic value by reducing waste through any structured solutions adopted by companies.

Food waste is not only an ethical or human problem, but also aneconomic opportunity: waste can be transformed into new, marketable products. The challenge is one of systemic transformation, such as transparent labeling, mandatory waste measurements, technological innovation, and collaboration among the different actors in a given supply chain.

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