In the battle against climate change
We have a low hanging fruit
Food waste!
When food is wasted, the resources used in growing, harvesting, transporting and storing it are wasted.
And then as most of it ends up in a landfill, additional greenhouse gases are emitted while it gets decomposed.
About a third of all the food produced in the world is being lost or wasted. And this is happening while 800 million people go to bed hungry.
Reducing food waste is something that all of us can play a part in while staying in our comfort zones.
I haven’t come across anything more convenient if you want to help the planet. Have you?
Time to read how these 3 startups are solving the menace of food waste in their own ways⬇️
OK, so here are the problems…In Africa, 20% of the population doesn’t get enough to eat. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 1 in 3 children has stunted growth due to lack of nutrition. Smallholder farms account for upto 90% of the food production there. These farms have as few as 5 fruit trees. Most of these farms grow the same products so the market suffers from the problem of overproduction. Also, due to a lack of refrigerated storage and transportation, the farm owners lose 90% of their products.
Making new products out of food waste…Female farmers growing mangoes and pineapples in Kenya and Uganda also faced these challenges. A lot of their produce was wasted. So an East African start-up Agricycle designed a solar dehydrator that allowed fruit farmers to turn perishable produce into dry-fruit snack food. Apart from bringing down the food wastage, it helped these women make 7-times more than the average daily wage.
Drying fruits helps to preserve them but the founder Joshua Shefner realized that the existing dehydrators aren’t built for the developing world.
Agricycle’s dehydrator works without electricity. It’s a simple container that heats up in the sun while protecting the fruit inside.
Although they started with the dehydrator, they soon realized that just producing dried fruits is not enough, if there aren’t any customers
From tree to shelf…So they decided to build the entire supply chain. Farmers use these solar dehydrators to preserve their mangoes, pineapples and jackfruit. Agricycle buys it from them and sells it in the United States and Europe. Customers who purchase the dried fruit can find a QR code on each bag that narrates the story of the women who dried it and the farmers who grew it.
How did we manage to reach here?…1/3rd of the total food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted in a year. That’s enough to feed 2 billion people. At the same time, 1 in 9 people go to bed hungry. Food waste occurs at every stage of the supply chain and due to different reasons- oversupply, poor storage, aesthetics (yes, we live in a crazy world!), our demand for fresh food all year round.
Swedish startup…Karma helps consumers to buy unsold food from restaurants, cafes and grocery stores at half the normal price towards the end of the day. These are perfectly edible meals that restaurants and supermarkets would otherwise have thrown away at the end of the day. While consumers can get the meals at a discount, restaurants can earn some extra revenue, while reducing food wastage and helping the planet.
On Karma’s app, customers can browse various food merchants and the food items they have put on sale.
They can place the order and make the payment on the app. They can then go and collect the food from the restaurant.
Karma takes 25% of every transition that happens on its app.
Making it even more accessible…Operating in Sweden, the UK and France, in 2020, Karma reached 1m users and saved more than 2m meals from ending up in the landfills. It is also experimenting with the idea of a communal smart fridge, where instead of customers coming to a shop at the end of the day, retailers can leave the food in a communal fridge for it to be collected. The communal fridges also allow wholesalers to sell their surplus food, who don’t have a storefront like restaurants and grocery stores.
Let’s talk about a different kind of food waste…fruit peels, the pulp left after squeezing the juice, nutshells. While it’s true that these items can be decomposed, they take time to do so. There are different estimates available out there but it usually takes between 3 weeks to 2 months for an apple core, 2-6 months for a banana peel, and up to 2 years for orange peels to decompose. Pistachio shells can even take more than 3 years to biodegrade in the outdoors.
But apparently, we can upcycle them…Green design startup Ottan Studio produces upcycled decor from this waste. With the rise in the furniture and construction sector, more and more forests are lost and Ottan Studio wants to fight that in a unique way. It collects fruit peels, leaves, cut grass and creates colourful and trendy furniture, decorative items and wall panelling with them.
The waste is collected from local retailer companies, food producers and greenhouses.
It is then cleaned, dried and the materials are ground together.
These materials are then added to green resins and injected into moulds to create a variety of products.
It all started when…founder ayse yılmaz was sitting under a tree in a park when she got inspired to upcycle the falling autumn leaves. An example of their design is lampshades made from the pulp of carrot or orange juice. They do not use any artificial colours in their products and the natural colour of the waste material is reflected in the products, making every product unique.
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