Kompakt attended the Resource Event at London’s ExCeL arena…
Among the many interesting talks we attended, one that is worth discussing is the Food Waste Panel. On the panel, we were lucky enough to hear the thoughts of Julie Hill, Chair at WRAP; Paul Featherstone, Procurement Director at SugaRich; Raquel Carrasco, Organics and Technology Director at Veolia; Arthur Kay, CEO at Bio-bean; and Claire Atkins-Morris, Head of Waste at Sodexo.
We made notes on the talk, paraphrasing each party’s answers. For the benefit of this blog post, we will make our own answer or comment to the questions.
Julie: How best can we reduce waste?
Claire: Prevention is the first priority for waste. The issue is, when you look at the waste hierarchy, you miss the levels of waste prevention, because it’s hard to measure. It’s very hard to find a baseline, and discovering tangible methods of monitoring waste prevention is very difficult too. You could say that creating a ‘prevention culture’ in some businesses is a low priority back ground operation.
If you go in at the food waste recovery stage and assess the supply chain, you can make preparations for prevention. Targeting these areas leads to preventative practices, because people don’t realize how much is being wasted until the issue is addressed, monitored and then educated.
Raquel: Understanding current volumes of waste through measurement and scales on lorries and in kitchens. Do residents have any idea how much they are throwing away? Measure, then take measures.
Arthur: Most of the waste going through Bio-bean is post-consumer coffee grounds or pre-consumer ‘chaff’. Coffee is an efficient waste stream, it’s easy to measure because there is nothing to separate.
Paul: It’s not rocket science, monitor and track waste to tackle the seemingly unavoidable. Reduce the waste factor, even if it’s not good for business. Offer prevention education to clients and customers as a trust exercise.
Feed humans, then the food banks, then the animals, before other sustainable routes, and if all of that is done and there is still waste left over, only then should it go to landfill or incineration. Anaerobic digestion is a great method for food waste that can’t be used for animals.
Raquel: Anaerobic Digestion is the best alternative for food inedible by animals. It only works in proximity though, you won’t really find a large scale AD set-up in London because of odour concerns. It’s more of a rural option.
Arthur: Raise the value chain and raise everything up the waste hierarchy, making it more valuable. Also, we must simplify the waste streams by separating more. The brewery stream is one example of a simple waste stream.
For the 25 million tonnes of food waste being created each year, Anaerobic Digestion is preferable to incineration and landfill for a circular approach.
Claire: It is hard getting food waste out of London as Raquel said.
It’s a utopian idea to create a circular economy by applying the idea to all businesses. Instead, we should be creating an outlet for all waste streams and providing those outlets to all businesses. It’s not always best for an outlet though, some waste is simply best managed on site.
KOMPAKT: We mostly agree with what Paul had to say. To effectively prevent food waste, we must monitor and track it first, so we really know what we are dealing with and the angles it can be tackled from. Offering prevention education to clients is a great trust exercise, and something that Kompakt also does.
Finding avenues for food waste that divert it from landfill is important. Food recycling machinery is another option to keep the carbon footprint of food waste low, with our machinery treating waste in kitchens.
Julie: There are higher value products and chemicals that can be extracted from bio-waste, with some companies innovating chemical extractions that result in high values per kilo. Are you looking at technologies that advance Anaerobic Digestion?
Paul: The example that springs to mind is citrus manufacturers, who extract a high value natural oil from orange peel and a waste that is great for animal feed. The location of the waste and the extraction centre must be relative, it’s no good to transport waste great distances for such activities.
Claire: One of the issues for Anaerobic Digestion is that global access to it doesn’t exist. It’s a great outlet for us in the UK, but because foreign markets aren’t as mature, they are already forced into finding alternative innovations.
Raquel: When you look at specific waste streams you will find numerous technologies. Ethanol extraction from breweries is one example. The best way to close loops is through bespoke waste solutions.
KOMPAKT: Scrutinizing your own waste stream can be a value process, albeit difficult to assess what constitutes ‘valuable’. We’ve heard of Mexican’s extracting bi-products from tequila to make bio-plastics which is quite a unique thing to do. Unless food recycling is further explored, how will we ever know if potato peelings could be used for medicine, or egg shells for skin creams?
Julie: Hypothetically speaking, there is a new minister for the circular approach, what would you want from them?
Claire: Fundamentally, the new minister must understand the problem to be able to help it or have any positive influence.
Paul: I may be liable to some criticism for this answer, but we are too used to having a wasteful society. The flaws are within us, because of the high demand for accessibility to produce. If I wanted a tiger loaf at 12 o’clock in the afternoon, or 12 o’clock at night, the supermarket must meet this demand and sell it. We have too great an expectation on retailers and the government must seek to change this.
Raquel: Well, they can’t do any worse than the last minister! (Crowd laughs)
Currently for waste, 70% of the cost is in the collection and 30% of the cost is in the treatment. The government has been subsidizing the 30% and by helping at the wrong end, they have not helped waste become a resource. If it becomes too expensive to be worth collecting, nobody will want to collect the waste, and then it will be an even more valuable problem.
Arthur: The new minister should seek to improve the technology of the future and allow the industry to work its way backwards.
Paul: I disagree with Raquel, I think we should focus on improving the treatment side so that waste will become a valuable resource, collections will still continue.
KOMPAKT: We are somewhere on the fence between Paul and Raquel. Food waste treatment and food waste collection are both important. What both are failing to acknowledge is that food recycling machinery exists in the middle of both. This machinery can treat the food waste and cut out the need for collection. It might not work on a huge scale, but for large scale food waste collections, surely it’s best to use the waste for energy. The worst case scenario would be small amounts of food waste being collected, as the carbon footprint of all those small collections would be awful!