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Discover the innovations that made food more sustainable this past year
In many cultures around the world, end-of-year celebrations are accompanied by extraordinary food consumption. In the UK, the Bank of England estimates that average household spending on food increases by 20 per cent during December. In the US, half of all turkeys sold are consumed on the single day of Thanksgiving, and in China and Vietnam, new year reunion dinners are known for their generous spreads.
Everyone enjoys indulging for a special occasion, but there is increasing awareness of the environmental impact of food. Food production accounts for 26 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, a situation exacerbated by widespread food waste. Of the food available at consumer level, 17 per cent is wasted. Many consumers are responding by making changes to their diets, with climatarianism growing in popularity. For example, Tofurky—a vegan turkey alternative—saw a 22 per cent increase in sales during Thanksgiving 2020.
But innovation also has a crucial role to play in reducing the environmental footprint of food, and in 2021 we saw many exciting innovations taking on the challenge.
Platform helps food businesses monitor their carbon emissions
A fundamental problem facing companies in the food industry is the difficulty of assessing the carbon footprint of a product across its whole lifecycle. At the same time, consumers are demanding ever-greater transparency when it comes to food labelling. Startup Foodsteps was founded to help solve this problem.
The company’s software platform is designed to help food manufacturers and restaurants understand the environmental impact of food products, set recommendations for improvements, and generate progress reports. Businesses can also download carbon labels to use on product packaging, menus, and apps. The technology will also generate a ‘food story’ for products, showing customers how sustainability improvements are being made for individual food items.
Vegetables grown in supermarket carpark
The locavore movement has been gaining pace in recent years, as consumers and businesses seek to create more self-reliant and resilient food networks by eating locally. However, eating locally can be difficult in big cities. US grocery chain Natural Grocers has come up with the solution of using a ‘GardenBox’ – a shipping container that houses a vertical planting system filled with fresh produce.
The GardenBox is located in the store’s car park and is used to grow food hydroponically. The container’s 320 square feet are enough to grow more than 4,000 heads of organic lettuce – an amount that would normally take an entire acre of land to grow.
Food waste collected from businesses turned into energy
One of the big wins from COP26 was the proper acknowledgement of the need to tackle emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas that is more potent (but shorter lived) than the well-known climate villain carbon dioxide. Food waste rotting in landfills is a significant source of methane emissions. However, if captured and collected, methane can be used as a biogas that emits less CO2 than fossil fuels.
Startup StormFisher has developed a business model that creates a win-win situation when it comes to methane and food waste. The company collects food waste from restaurants, grocery stores, and other sources, and puts it through a process called anaerobic digestion. This produces methane-rich biogas that can be burned for electricity or heat, or further refined to create renewable natural gas (RNG). By keeping the food waste out of landfills, the amount of methane released into the atmosphere through natural decomposition is reduced. At the same time, the biogas can be used as an alternative to fossil fuels, or refined and injected into the existing gas network. This latter option makes the network, as a whole, less carbon intensive.
Open-source project encourages people to grow food at home
You can’t get more locavore than growing your own food. But if you live in a city, you will probably need to invest in a hydroponics system to do so. These systems can be expensive, and often require commitment to a costly seed subscription.
To help potential urban farmers avoid these costs, Felix Wieberneit, of the Royal College of Art and Imperial College London started the HECTAR Hydroponics project. Having built his own hydroponics system during lockdown, Felix decided to empower others to develop their own by providing the plans for his design free of charge, alongside supporting videos, materials lists, and a community forum.
The plans provide instructions for a unit that can grow up to 120 plants in a space the size of a cupboard. The design is fully modular and can be built using standard parts purchased from the local hardware store. Growers adapt the plans to suit the type of food they want to grow. People can then share their adaptations and improvements with others, creating a collaborative process.
Platform rates and promotes sustainable dining establishments
Restaurant dining is not the most sustainable way to eat – but everyone enjoys a treat every now and then. By raising the profile of sustainable eateries in Paris and beyond, online platform Écotable makes it easier for diners to eat out more sustainably.
Écotable operates by performing an environmental audit of restaurants, in order to assess the ways in which they can reduce their carbon footprint and increase their environmental standards. Adhering to strict audit criteria, Écotable then identifies and promotes, via its online platform, the most sustainable restaurants to the general public.
Words: Matthew Hempstead
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