Reducing Food Waste in the Agrifood Sector

Chris Peterson: Hello and welcome to Activating Sustainability the Anthesis Podcast. I’m your host, Chris Peterson. When we think about sustainability, we often speak of efficiency, waste reduction, environmental and social impacts, and the creation of new systems and ways of thinking to make things better for people in the planet.

There’s likely no better example of where this thinking and effort is needed than in the area of food waste. The UN found that in 2022 globally, we wasted over a billion meals a day, while nearly that number are affected by hunger. And a third of humanity faces food insecurity. To shed more light on the issues, challenges, and opportunities around food waste.

I’m really excited to be joined today by two of our food waste subject matter experts. Amanda Thomas and Simon Davis. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining.

Amanda Thomas: Thank you so much. It’s nice to be here.

Simon Davis: Pleasure to be here.

Chris Peterson: Wonderful. Well, we’d love to get a better understanding of when we talk about food waste, what are we talking about and why does it matter?

Amanda Thomas: Yeah, brilliant question to kick off with. I think, we talk about food waste sitting in the context of a much broader food system. And certainly when we talk about where we need to be heading, towards a much more sustainable food system, then there’s often talk about three key levers.

One of those being changing the way that we make our food. So driving much more towards regenerative agriculture practice, which will reduce a lot of the negative impacts of the way we make food today. The second lever being, encouraging and influencing more people to eat a sustainable diet globally.So reducing the impacts of what we’re consuming.

And then the third lever, but definitely not the last lever, is the reduction of food waste. And even though in that context it’s. It probably is a smaller lever. Estimates say that if we are to tackle food waste, it would make a big hole in the global greenhouse emissions, which are estimated to be anywhere between 8 and 10% of total greenhouse emissions globally.

So, a sizeable amount to be tackled.

Simon Davis: Yeah. So I think as Amanda talked to the role of waste in a sustainable food system, it has, a major opportunity from a brand perspective, to turn that risk, that impact that brands are making within their value chain in terms of growing and sourcing food wasting it at various touch points. So turning that risk and cost into an opportunity to create and derive new value from reducing waste, better managing waste, but also looking at the role of innovation in valorizing that waste and commercializing that waste into new markets.

So I think, a major driver for brands is reducing cost, but also looking at new opportunities to drive revenue. And secondly, through that creating unique brand differentiation and stories are around the impact they’re making, that we know consumers highly value waste as an area of sustainability that they expect brands to better manage. And if brands can unlock new potential from, waste then it creates better consumer confidence and um, brand differentiation.

 Chris Peterson: When we talk about food waste, are we talking about kind of inedible food? Are we talking about food that’s left on the fields? What does that, what is it that we’re really talking about?

Amanda Thomas: Yeah, that’s a great question actually. Because we know from studies that have been done, from the work that we do with our clients that food waste occurs out of food loss and food waste, different terminologies, different uses of the words occurs at pretty much every stage of the value chain and to varying degrees.

And it’s very much impacted as well by geographies. By countries. And you very much see that right from the very beginning on farm, you are already at that stage of the value chain, seeing food loss, seeing food that is perfectly edible that would’ve been destined for human consumptions, but for various reasons, whether that be the impacts of climate change, whether that be just that there simply wasn’t demand, lots of different factors, that is then unfortunately not going to its ultimate destination and is being wasted. And then you go upwards through the value chain and at every point you are either seeing inefficiencies or areas where value chains are not potentially working as collaboratively as they could be.

It is the nature of our complex global food supply chains. That means this is an incredibly difficult subject and difficult area to tackle and yeah, all the way through, up to consumers where again, you see a huge amounts of waste and a huge opportunity for behavior change to be addressed in a positive way.

Chris Peterson: Great. Yeah, and I’ll go back on some of those pieces within it, but maybe just before I do Simon, I’d be interested to hear, given that our audience is primarily kind of a business community and maybe a lot of consumers would love to hear what you see as their role within that space.

Simon Davis: So another great question. I think we can look at it in this, in two perspective, that one being the brand. So what’s the brand’s role and how do they create unique value and differentiation and ultimately impact in the value chains that they source from and procure a wide range of commodities with, various touch points through the production and distribution process that drive waste. And then also I think the second perspective is how those brands can collectively work together with each other, but with the public sector, academic institutes, policy, governments in, key hotspots where regulation needs to be developed or barriers need to be lowered, or finance needs to be better blended to deliver scale and impact.

So if I just take the first element, the brand, I think there’s two roles to the brand one is a business driver and one is a consumer driver. And operationally waste costs and brands need to consider where their hotspots are within their value chains and how they reduce the operational costs of waste through improved production processes, improved storage, improved processing, distribution, right through to consumer level in how they support consumers, reduce and waste less within the home. Brands need to think about how they turn that cost into an opportunity to create new value and new revenue through reduce cost of production, greater supply relationships, but also apply innovation and new technologies to harvest waste in a way that creates and valorizes new revenue streams from it.

And then just a point on collaboration, waste is shared risk and opportunity too for a lot of brands and, it’s unreasonable to think that a brand is going to tackle this problem in isolation. Collaboration is key and we need to support the food sector work more collaboratively. Together where there’s shared value chains, shared suppliers, shared farms, in a way that is driving harmonised action measurement progress against the waste agenda from farm to fork.

Chris Peterson: And it seems intuitive that this waste is all bad. But we’d love to hear from both of your perspectives. What are some of the big drivers for brands to really think about taking this challenge on? It feels like a valuable fight to fight. Feels like a difficult fight to fight. So curious, what does the research say in terms of the business case for action and consumer pressure and expectations, et cetera?

Amanda Thomas: I think there’ve been a few studies to try to quantify financially what the opportunity is here. And I think some of the estimations talk about a $750 billion opportunity to the food system. So you know that alone is quite, quite a big opportunity and a driver.

 I think the food businesses, if they can develop a culture around food waste minimisation, food waste reduction, food is a very emotive subject. We all need food to thrive. It’s very emotional, it’s very cultural.

So if a business is seen to take action in the space, I think it develops a really positive culture and really engages the organization across the piece. And gets great involvement from employees. I think also Simon mentioned it before, huge brand reputational risk of not being seen to be tackling and addressing food waste in your own organisation and in your supply chain.

And I think increasingly as well in consumers minds if waste that’s happening at home. If in at some point there’s a perception that actually lies with potentially the retailer or the manufacturer of that food product, perhaps confusion over date labeling, perhaps packaging is not been designed as robustly as it could be, then I think that as well is a big driver that if a brand can tackle food waste and in turn, help consumers make the most of the food that they have purchased and reduce consumer food waste, then that has huge benefits too.

Simon Davis: I think these, brands recognise that the, from an operational perspective, the ability to control waste is relatively easier than, being able to control what happens to food once it’s been purchased. But we’re seeing a lot of brands retailers working more creatively on strategies that help support consumers with the right nudges and incentives to, and education to manage food in the home to think creatively about how they use short shelf life food in a way with new recipes, for example. And how they incentivise consumers through areas such as vouchers and, fruit and vegetable schemes where they’re, incentivising consumers to purchase the right products – those that have high risk of waste in the home, how they support consumers – think about purchasing the right volume of those products in a way that is yeah, gonna drive and reduce waste at home level. But also campaigns in store, purchasing campaigns. We see a lot of examples in Europe of retailers giving away free fruit and vegetables.

Again, if there are risk of inventory challenges and they have lots of surplus stock, that creates win-win from a waste perspective, but also driving improving nutritional outcomes from a sustainable diet perspective too.

Amanda Thomas: And just as you were talking there, Simon, there’s some others that have come to mind. If companies can tackle food waste, then essentially what they’re doing is negating that need for new food to be grown. And in the context of a world where increasingly we’re seeing climate change impact production of food and extreme weather events that are then affecting crop yields, that is a huge driver I think, for more supply chain resilience. A second one that comes to mind is just improved operational efficiencies. Every company wants to be as efficient as it can. If it can be looking at the processes that they’ve got in-house and understanding how that is impacting food waste levels at the operational level, then that’s only going to impact their bottom line directly.

It’s a huge financial incentive. And then going back to before Simon’s suggestion and talk about the revenue driving opportunity. I think we have a tendency to ignore the fact that this is not just about reducing food waste, but actually turn the subject around. Let’s not be negative and talk about waste as a negative.

 It’s an opportunity. There are so much going on in the space around upcycled food, about how implementing circular solutions, and we’re working with lots of clients in that space around the revenue opportunity that presents from implementing circular business practice with food and food waste.

Chris Peterson: Curious how you all see the linkage back to, say like food security. Simon, you mentioned nutritional outcomes. Amanda, you mentioned that kind of emotive nature of food and also thinking about economic hardships that we’re seeing and people’s access to food. So curious how that’s showing up within the space.

Amanda Thomas: That’s a brilliant point to raise, Chris because we’ve focused a little bit on the financial element and the environmental impact of food waste. But yes, we mustn’t forget the social impact of waste and it’s just awful that in these times we’re seeing anything between a third to 40% of food that we produce being wasted.

And you set that in the context of a world that is increasingly seeing higher levels of food insecurity and higher levels of food poverty. You know, I think. there have been studies that have shown if we were to take that food waste and we had the ability to put it in the right place, we’d probably have enough to feed the one in 11 people that live in hunger on a daily basis.

Now I know it’s not as simple as that. It most definitely isn’t, but that gives you an idea about the social impact that this could have. Yes, definitely an important aspect.

Simon Davis:  Yeah. I mean there’s enough calories in the world being produced to feed everyone, and so largely a distribution problem, but waste is a key element of that, right? We work, we operate in a just in time. Food system supply and demand is just in time. We’re on the right track, but we need to think more ambitiously about, completely eliminating edible food waste and as an overarching goal. And, with emerging technology and innovation that brings the opportunity for pace and scale to really rethink our food system, but also rethink our approach to tackling waste and waste hotspots. We’ve got a great opportunity to really revolutionise the way that we produce and procure and distribute food in a way that makes food more accessible and affordable for those that most need it.

Chris Peterson: How do you all see that opportunity emerging? Where are some of the key things that kind of, those key levers that are working well? The strategies that seem to support realising that opportunity in front of us.

Amanda Thomas: We work with so many clients in this space, and it’s very often a very tailored solution to their particular situation. But we often take a very common approach to trying to start to tackle this, and we would always advocate first and foremost. Reduce where you can; let’s not have the food waste generation happen in the first place.

So, what are the solutions out there that can help your business specifically with areas that have been identified as hotspots for you? And there’s lots of technological developments and solutions out there. AI is coming into play in terms of systems demand, forecast, alignment, dynamic pricing, which helps you maximise sell through product and avoiding any unsold goods. But inevitably there, there’s always going to be waste. That’s why the SDG talks about a 50% reduction in food waste that they think is realistic by 2030.

So that’s a recognition that we can tackle food waste, but we’re probably not ever going to get that reduction down to zero. So then we talk to clients about this, the next best thing that you can do is making sure that you are diverting whatever food waste that is being generated that is still edible, that you are diverting that to people. And secondarily the diverting it to animals. So we see huge amounts, huge growth back to that social impact in food redistribution, food surplus redistribution within local communities that is really helping to get food that’s still edible to those people that need it. And where it’s not going to humans, where perhaps there’s restrictions or difficulties and challenges with that, then a secondary route would always be to give it to animals.

Chris Peterson: you mentioned quickly about, black soldier flies and orange peels. Maybe do you wanna explain that a little bit?

Amanda Thomas: Can definitely talk to the black soldier fly piece. Yes. Yeah. That’s quite an emerging and evolving landscape at the moment, but certainly new in the area of diverting food waste to animal feed. And certainly it is proving to be a potentially more cost-effective and more environmentally better solution for the production of animal feed for particular sectors. So for example, for poultry and for fish for example. And there’s some wonderful circular solutions there where you can see food waste going into black soldier fly. Black soldier fly that creates then a really protein-rich animal feed, it can be fed to poultry, poultry delivers eggs back into the food system, the human food system and it’s that lovely virtuous circle.

Simon Davis: On that point. I think the solutions are here, right? And of course, there’s always gonna be new solutions and technologies and innovations, and we can talk about the challenge to scale, but something like black soldier fly is a ready-made solution that is incredibly exciting, but it’s not gonna work in isolation.

The solution, the technology alone is not going be enough. We need to think about how it fits into the current ecosystem, how we support on-farm adoption, how we reduce the regulatory barriers, how we educate consumers on the value that something like that innovation can bring and build consumer acceptance of eating food that, has been fed insects.

So it, not gonna be a one stop shop solution. I think we need to think about the mix of the science innovation but also education and bringing others on the journey.

Chris Peterson: And maybe just to unpack that a little bit, I know through the conversation you’ve talked about doing like a waste hotspot. You’ve talked about the importance of, collaboration, cultural shifts within organisations et cetera. Would love to hear a little bit of, as you are engaging with organisations, given the scale of this challenge, given the multi-attribute, multi-audience aspect of it. How do you get started and, what does that process look like in terms of identifying what does make sense and where to allocate the capital and effort within it?

Amanda Thomas: Yeah, it’s, a really great question actually, because I would say every client that comes to us and engages on the subject of food waste, is probably at a very different stage of a journey. And it will have varying degrees of importance within the overarching sustainability or ESG strategy.

But yes, definitely the starting point is that getting that understanding of where does this sit in terms of overall materiality aspect. How important is this for you as a business? And then typically we start off with clients helping them to understand first and foremost how to go about just assessing how big of a problem this is in their organisation. Often they’re completely unaware of the scale of it and therefore the opportunity it represents to them. And being able to help them measure first and foremost, is a great starting point. It then starts to give you, the ability to get the right data in place, get data systems in place that enable you to dig a bit deeper into ‘my gosh, this is the scale of it.’ And actually you’ve got some really clear areas of your business that are what you would classify as hotspot areas for food waste. Let’s dig into those. Try and understand what the causal factors are, and then you can unlock. what the potential is in terms of solutions. And we are seeing so many clients now moving beyond that stage of data and reporting and moving into that, what I would say is the more exciting piece of, okay, we understand our data now we actually are in a position to be able to implement some solutions and interventions and see the impact that’s having. For us as a business, for our consumers and for the environment as well.

Simon Davis: I think we’re also seeing a move to more brands looking at the flow of waste from farm to fork. Amanda talks about the Measurement being so critical, and a lot of organisations are at various stages of maturity and being able to measure their impact across the value chain and identify hotspots and, target investment and time in, different parts of the value chain. But, I think we’re seeing more organisations thinking more holistically about waste as an opportunity. So, you know, you take production, waste on a farm. Amanda mentioned at the start how can brands support those farms operate in a more responsible and regenerative way that delivers win-win for the ecosystem, society, but also reduces waste and improves operational efficiency.

How can they better store that product? How can they look at logistics and efficiencies and logistics processes to get that, product to their distribution centers quicker, greater shelf life? And then how do they then manage that product at store level using, technology to maximise the sales of those products in a way that reduces waste at store.

And then how do they then, drive behaviour change at, consumer level. And it’s more that flow, from farm to fork, it requires a systemic approach and everything is connected and I think more brands are seeing those connections at various stages.

Amanda Thomas: Yeah. They definitely would start, wouldn’t they, with their own operations, get their own house in order first, but then as with most food businesses and their emissions footprint, so much of it is scope three. It is the same for food waste.

There’s so much you can do in your own operations and then you need to go outside of that upstream into your supply chain. And that’s where the magic can happen on food waste. When you get that engagement it’s, it’s tough to do. But if you can get that stakeholder engagement upstream in your supply chain, get round the table, take the commercial piece outside, leave that off the table for now, but try and get to the, nub of what is causing the current food waste levels. We’re seeing so many examples of – not just cross collaboration in existing value change – but the opportunity to step into other sectors. Traditionally where food wouldn’t have engaged with a completely different sector, food waste actually presents an opportunity for you to do that, to step outside and have, oh, there’s waste in this particular food category.

 Actually that is a wonderful feedstock for this product that sits in the textile supply chain or sits in some other manufactured product supply chain.

Chris Peterson: And curious, is there a process, a case study that really stands out for each of you as like, oh, that’s the thing that’s given me a lot of hope for, like we’re really making progress, that if we could figure out how to scale that, or that really stands out to you as a successful practice within the space.

Amanda Thomas: Gosh, that’s a really tricky question ’cause I see so much that has got the potential right now in this space. There’s so much innovation. I’m seeing a lot of and it’s probably more sitting in the consumer space, is so much energy around, driving positive behaviour change at home.

There’s lots of apps that are being developed and gamification of these apps that really kind of reward behaviour change and these incredible culinary chefs and people who are happy to put themselves out there on influencer platforms and who have the ability to open a fridge. Look at what most people would regard as well – that’s just, I can’t do anything with that. I’ve got, you know, half a broccoli there and, a bit of cheese and would not have the creative knowledge or skills and passion and energy to make that into an amazing meal. But you’re seeing that a little bit more now and chefs are doing it, and I think that could be the start of an amazing movement, but that’s just one example.

Simon Davis: I think it’s a great example. And, clearly the bulk of the issue still lies with consumers in terms of a hotspot. So, that’s where innovation is gonna play a Key role everywhere. But, if we can get innovation right and in the hands of consumers, then the potential payback is significant. I’m gonna be cheeky and, choose two. I mean, we talk about black soldier fly. I love the potential black soldier fly from a circularity perspective, a consumer of waste, you know, a protein source. It ticks all the, may not be currently accepted by consumers, but it ticks all the like sustainability boxes in terms of potential. And it, and it also creates an opportunity to think more broadly about the value it can create for farms in terms of impact, but also commercial value.

And then I think that AI we touched on for, whilst it’s a relatively immature area, everyone’s very excited. But I saw the other day an AI use case at retail level where it could automate identifying expiry dates of products on shelf. It’s quite a manual process currently. And, but automate at scale targeted focus on food nearing end of life at retail level and the potential of that in making it accessible for consumers in a way that’s a little bit more targeted and focused.

And I think from memory it say the trial saved around 2 million meals from landfill. So it has a, again, great potential and one use case, but I think the potential AI is significant.

Chris Peterson: No, that’s great and it’s, so exciting to see the glint in both of your eyes of like the opportunities in front of you as opposed to the challenge within it. One last question for me is if there was one thing you would encourage people to do to really get started on this path or to take the next step within it, is there something that stands out for you as a kind of key action or insight people could take.

Amanda Thomas: I think I would always probably start with data. I think there’s an element of being able to measure and understand your data first because there’s little probably benefit in just simply diving into – I think the waste is coming from here, so let’s just implement something here –

 I think you’ve got to get to grips with your data first. Really understand that data so that you understand. What other the major drivers of waste and that will enable you, that will inform you to make the right decisions about where you go next, and that will then have a direct positive impact for you. So I would encourage that

Simon Davis: Agreed. I think the only other area I would add beyond data is, you know, we operate in a food system. Collaboration is key. Think laterally about who you might be able to collaborate to solve your challenges. And that might mean working collaboratively with one of your competitors. It might mean looking at other commodity supply chains. It might mean looking outside the sector. Your perceived waste might be another sector’s opportunity in terms of critical reliance on a particular chemical or commodity within, your value chain. And so think laterally, think big, and collaborate.

Chris Peterson: Amazing, thank you both so much for the time and insight. Really appreciate it.

Simon Davis: Thank you.

Chris Peterson: And thank you for listening. We’ll link some valuable resources from the team in the podcast description, and as always, we’d love to hear from you on your feedback and can be reached through the anthesisgroup.com website, where you’ll also find past episodes and lots of valuable resources. Thanks again. Take care.