TED Talk: Why we need to think beyond reducing food waste

Our CEO and Co-founder Jessica was recently invited by TEDx Oslo Met to discuss the importance and urgency of fixing our food systems

Where we are now

It’s been a tough couple of years to be a current inhabitant of planet Earth. We’ve been told non-stop that we as a species have failed to take care of our home, and that our actions have caused irreparable damage to our planet.

As consumers, we’ve been conditioned through a mix of green-washed marketing campaigns and constant bombardment of (very depressing) news that the future of the world lays solely in our hands. All too often, the responsibility for enacting change to solve pressing issues surrounding climate change — like food waste, are shifted from corporations to the consumers.

Climate change, the Covid-19 pandemic, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have been top of mind for consumers, gearing purchase choices either away or towards the relevant products in response to these global events (hello, 10-pack hand-sanitizers just sitting around at home…).

Not only is the responsibility shifted towards consumers, many of the suggested solutions are often in the form of short-term, band-aid solutions aimed at treating the symptoms of climate change — not the cause.

What’s the problem?

Many consumers are now tasked with a massive and seemingly impossible problem to tackle. For one, consumers aren’t always equipped with the know-how and (verified) facts surrounding the climate crisis to enact change. The BBC have recently covered a PR plot that helped sow doubts surrounding the veracity of climate change amongst consumers.

If consumer behaviour can so easily be swayed by PR (and now social media) campaigns, is it really a good idea to rely so much on the consumers to solve the climate crisis?

There have definitely been laudable efforts on an individual level to prevent further climate-related damage from consumers, but recycling your plastic forks and becoming a flexitarian ultimately isn’t going to cut it when it comes to saving our planet.

Oh great. So what’s the solution?

You’ve heard it before. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to tackling climate change. You’ve also heard this before: it’s a joint-effort. Just because consumers can’t solely be responsible for enacting change doesn’t mean consumers have no responsibility. It’s not a zero-sum game.

Another thing you might have heard before, but maybe need to hear again from somebody else — it takes baby steps. It’s much more paralyzing to consider the prospect of a rapidly heating planet when you feel like you need to save the world — all alone, and at once.

That’s why consumers and corporations need to join together: we all play a part in solving this global crisis. So yes, continue to recycle your plastic forks (and knives…), enjoy that flexitarian diet, and bring your re-usable tumbler to your next coffee run. But there’s lots more you can do — especially in the space of cutting global emissions by tackling food waste.

 

What is food waste?

Globally, food waste emissions account for about a quarter of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissionsThese emissions are produced by food waste rotting in landfills, taking the form of methane gas. To put that into perspective, emissions from food waste are at least three times the emissions generated from the aviation industry on a global scale.

By fixing our food systems, we will be able to drastically reduce global emissions that greatly contribute to climate change. Conveniently, fixing our food system and fighting food waste is something consumers and businesses alike can easily take part in.

 

 

It’s time to step up as a business

That’s not to say companies haven’t been taking the lead in the green transition at all. All hope is not lost. A whole industry surrounding climate tech and tech-for-good have propped up in recent years dedicated solely to fighting climate change.

If climate change isn’t a big enough incentive for your business, look at it this way: food waste is essentially sunken costs to our economy. The economic impact of food waste is massive, and every bagel that is thrown out is money lost — not just for your business, but to the global economy.

 

The current solutions

Today’s food waste solutions are found in a couple of different categories:

Redistribution systems
These are essentially marketplaces where individuals can buy leftovers from businesses
Expiry management systems
Peer-to-peer market places for unused food
Think the likes of Facebook giveaway groups, Gumtree posts giving away unused foods, etc.
Dynamic pricing tools
Waste-tracking solutions

While we have an abundance of companies in the food waste space, these solutions only prevent food from being thrown away. We’re still just treating the symptoms of the issue. Like the old adage: prevention is better than cure.

What do you mean? Isn’t it good that we already have solutions to parts of the problem?

That’s great, and that’s a good start. But our earthly resources are limited, and it’s high time to shift our goal from good enough to optimal. When an artisanal sourdough bread is crafted, made with love and (increasingly) expensive ingredients, it’s not exactly optimal for it to go stale and end up as feed for animals.

Lose-lose situation

Don’t get us wrong, animals deserve the best of foods. But you cannot honestly say that artisanal sourdough bread was crafted and intended to become feed for animals. In fact, animals who are fed animal feed should be eating vegetables, roots, and grass. So this is a lose-lose situation for all. The pigs aren’t happy, the baker isn’t happy, and the planet certainly isn’t happy.

Suppose the baker decides to sell his leftover bread on a platform where individuals can buy his leftovers. The catch here is that these platforms bank on the fact that food businesses regularly overproduce, resulting in waste at the end of the day. These platforms also charge a fee on the transaction sale as part of redistribution of the waste.

This again is a lose-lose situation for everybody: the baker loses out on money (and time!) in producing his bread, and even has to pay someone else to redistribute his leftovers. For the buyers, the situation isn’t all dandy either. Often when buyers pick up these leftover bags, they are bombarded with goods they did not ask for (three loaves of expiring bread at once, anybody?), regardless of the “bargain” they thought they got.

So to recap: the environment loses out massively, the economy loses out from the inefficient use of resources… and the fact that there’s a culture of buying something cheap to “rescue” the product isn’t optimal — neither for the seller nor buyer (did you really want that expiring pasta sauce?).

 

Rooting for the root causes

Today’s food waste solutions often result in a sub-optimal situation for all involved. This is why the challenges related to food waste cannot be solved in a vacuum, but rather need to be resolved alongside challenges related to profitability, efficiency, and genuine consumer demand. It’s not just a food waste problem, many other factors are at play here, and many other factors are impacted on the way.

 

Going back to the baker example: the baker only has leftovers because they decided to make too much. They have leftovers because they bought more than they actually needed. Without addressing the core issue here, overproduction (along with the losses it represents for businesses) will unfortunately remain the status quo.

Not only is the responsibility of fixing climate change often pushed back onto consumers, but now — food waste is too. The troubling part is, consumers will actually continue to waste their money buying things that they don’t actually end up eating, or wanting.

Why is that? Consumers have been conditioned to alleviate the consequences of climate change through their purchases. Any impact they can affect with their purchases can help, at least according to the mainstream rhetoric telling them so. Consider it from an economic perspective and imagine where that money could have been used instead.

 

Going back down the production line

According to a McKinsey study, food waste generated at the end of the supply chain — in households, for example, represents more than eight times the energy use as that generated far earlier in the supply chain — on farms.

Simply put, producing food that is ready for consumption is eight times as energy intensive as producing the raw ingredients. This amplified energy usage means that throwing away that sourdough bread is actually more wasteful than if the baker just hadn’t baked it in the first placeeven if he had ordered excess flour.

Forget the pure monetary costs, think about the fact that the bread had to start with a farmer planting a seed to grow wheat. The wheat then needs to be harvested, milled, baked, packaged, transported and then distributed to where you buy your bread. Keep in mind all the touch-points, human and automated labour that needs to keep this value chain going — it’s a lot.

This is why focusing our efforts this far down the supply chain — where the food has already reached the consumer is so inefficient. Tackling food waste when the food has already been baked, transported, and distributed is like dealing with a tumour at late-stage.

Why not address the issue far earlier in the value chain? Why not address the issue when we are still at 8x less energy intensiveness in the production? Unlike a tumour, it’s already apparent where the issue comes from, and it’s easier to catch these issues early on. We say focus on preventing food waste altogether, rather than dealing with the monster it has already become.

Solutions!

Ah, your favorite part of every article.

What the world needs now is to shift our focus towards solutions that strengthen the entire food system. We need holistic solutions that are advantageous for producers, retailers, consumers, and the environment.

We need to focus on food optimization, producing only what’s necessary instead of encouraging overproduction. We need to ensure our solutions aren’t just looking after big food businesses, but also enabling small players like your local coffee shop to thrive with minimal food waste. What these solutions need to do is to find that sweet spot between underselling and overproducing.

The key here is that when there is consumer demand for something, the optimal economic outcome is the consumer paying full price for the product. Reduced prices for something nobody wanted is not just inefficient, it’s illogical.

 

The plans, the plans, the plans you make.

The good news is that this isn’t just some visionary’s ideal of what the world should look like. In recent years, we’ve already started to see preventative initiatives at every stage of the food value chain.

We’ve seen a huge surge in precision agriculture, using data to help farmers produce more with fewer resources. The foodtech industry has exploded recently with inventions like plant-based coatings that help extend the shelf-life of avocados and citrus fruits. On the transport side, massive improvements have been made in cold-chain technology, allowing far more efficient storage and transportation of harvest produce.

For retailers, sensors are being used to track freshness levels of batches of produce. This allows retailers to know which boxes of lettuce to open and stock first. Data analytics help retailers and distributors optimize ordering and reduce waste.

(Learn how Savvie uses AI-driven data insights to help food retail businesses optimize ordering and reduce waste)

And last but not least, in the saturated world of “green” consumer technology, an abundance of zero waste and meal planning tools have been developed to help consumers like you make your first baby step in saving the world — and you’re definitely not alone.