Page 60 - FoodFocusThailand No.168 March 2020

SOURCE OF ENGINEER
SOURCE OF ENGINEER

The booming business of

fighting food waste

A new wave of companies is figuring out how to make new products from food that used to end
up in the trash, from pulp popsicles to beer bread. Here are some examples to get you started.

The label on a bottle of the cold-pressed juice Wtrmln Wtr doesn’t consumer product. Renewal Mill, a company that raised a $2.5 million
mention food waste. But the problem was the inspiration for the seed round in early 2019, creates a nutritious flour out of a by-product
company, which launched six years ago. When the founders learned of making tofu and soymilk. The company currently makes a chocolate
that hundreds of millions of pounds of watermelon stayed in fields to chip cookie that serves as a proof of concept, but plans to focus primary
rot because the fruit was judged too unattractive for sale in on selling to other businesses. “We see a larger opportunity to move
supermarkets, they decided to create a product that could help avoid larger volumes of the byproducts and make a larger dent in the food
that waste. The juice is now available nationally, and the company is waste problem by selling to large CPG companies,” says Caroline
growing 30% year-over-year. Cotto, the chief operating officer for the startup.
It’s one example of an increasingly crowded space. ReFed, an Some of the food waste ingredients, like the tofu byproduct, come
organization that tracks the food waste industry, counts at least 70 from manufacturing, but the biggest opportunity for growth comes from
businesses and nonprofits that now transform food that otherwise farms, where growers are incentivized to overproduce to ensure that
would have been wasted into new products. “We’ve seen steady growth they can meet orders. “You’re talking about really high-quality, fresh
in the number of organizations developing upcycled products and the ingredients that currently lack a market,” says Cochran. While
types of ingredients being used,” says Chris Cochran, the organization’s repurposing food waste in new food is only one type of solution—others
executive director. The majority of these companies launched within range from innovations in labeling expiration dates to an invisible,
the last five years. plant-based coating that can help produce last longer—it can be cost-
In the U.S.—where Americans now waste 70% more food than effective, as the ingredients are sometimes available at a reduced
they did in the 1970s—food waste is responsible for roughly the same price.
amount of greenhouse gas emissions as 37 million cars. Globally, if A 2017 study suggested that consumers might also pay more for
food waste was a country, it would be the third-largest polluting country foods with “upcycled” ingredients. When the products market their
in the world. When food rots in landfills, it releases the potent ability to prevent food waste, that can also make consumers more
greenhouse gas methane. But the largest source of emissions comes aware of the problem and potentially help inspire them to cut waste at
from growing the food; even if it’s composted, food waste also wastes home, where the biggest proportion of food ends up in the trash.
the fertilizer, fuel, and other resources that went into producing it. Americans waste nearly a pound of food per person per day. And
Agriculture uses nearly half of U.S. farmland and two-thirds of its though it can’t tackle the entire problem, upcycling food waste can
freshwater. Waste happens at every stage of the process, from farm make a difference; ReFed estimates that using donated products alone
fields—where food may be abandoned if a farmer has a surplus or the can divert more than 100,000 tons of food waste each year, and
food has imperfections—to distribution centers, supermarkets, generate $285 million in economic value.
restaurants, food processing plants, and homes. Consumers throw out The number of brands on the market is likely to continue to grow,
the majority of the food wasted in the U.S., or roughly $450 of food says Nik Ingersoll, cofounder and CMO of Barnana, a snack company
each year. At the same time, more than 40 million Americans struggle founded in 2012 that sells “upcycled” dehydrated banana snacks made
with hunger. The problem is smaller in most other countries (Australians from bruised, overripe, or otherwise imperfect bananas that are usually
waste more, per capita) but still significant. left to rot on banana plantations. Now a multimillion-dollar business, it
The startups making new food from wasted ingredients typically sells products in both natural and mainstream supermarkets, and has
focus on waste from farms and food processing plants. Some of the rescued roughly 20 million tons of bananas to date. Ingersoll believes
startups are still early-stage and only sold online or in a few stores, but that consumers are still beginning to recognize the full extent of the
others, including Wtrmln Wtr, have gone mainstream. Large food food waste problem. “They think of food waste like, ‘Oh, I didn’t eat
companies, like Tyson Foods, have also launched new products with everything on my plate or in my fridge, and I threw it away,’” he says.
ingredients that would have been discarded in the past—in Tyson’s “But through the growing distribution, retail and consumer level, there’s
case, it made a protein crisp called Yappah from chicken trim, vegetable all sorts of waste.” As that’s better understood, he thinks that demand
puree, and spent grain from Molson Coors. The demand for former will grow. “As that awareness spreads, there’s going to be consumer
waste is affecting supply chains. Wtrmln Wtr cofounder and CEO Jody pressure to buy those types of products. I think people are just more
Levy says that one watermelon grower used to have four semi- conscious in the way they consume things. And on the brand side, I
truckloads of watermelons each season that he would write off as think that it makes for a compelling story to tell when you’re preparing
waste; now he sells it to be made into juice. “It has allowed the growers your ingredients in that way. So I would anticipate it continuing to grow
to think differently about how they treat the melons that previously a lot. I think we’re still very early on.”
weren’t able to be sold,” she says.
In some cases, companies have found that it makes the most sense เอกสารอ้างอิง/Reference
to create an ingredient to sell to other manufacturers rather than a new Everything you need to know about the booming business of fighting food waste.
www.fastcompany.com/90337075/inside-the-booming-business-of-fighting-
60 FOOD FOCUS THAILAND MAR 2020 food-waste

21/2/2563 BE 14:40
58-60_Source of Enginee_Fighting.indd 60
58-60_Source of Enginee_Fighting.indd 60 21/2/2563 BE 14:40