I lately had the pleasure of moderating a dialogue on meals waste valorization on the FHA Meals & Beverage 2024 occasion in Singapore.
It’s the area’s largest gathering of meals producers, foodservice corporations, and foodtech entrepreneurs, welcoming nicely over 70,000 delegates from 91 nations in Singapore’s sprawling Expo conference heart.
Whereas dialog and dealmaking between completely different meals sector stakeholders is the occasion’s bread-and-butter, there’s additionally time for typical convention content material within the type of panel discussions exploring a number of the key points dealing with the business right this moment – not least round questions of sustainability and technological innovation.
Meals waste is one such difficulty, and the agrifood business is more and more on the lookout for methods to keep away from landfills and incinerators to repurpose its waste byproducts, producing new income streams and addressing environmental and social challenges within the course of.
Internet hosting a panel titled ‘Waste to Wealth: Alternatives in Agri-Meals Facet-Stream Valorization,’ I used to be joined by three stellar audio system from Singapore’s agrifoodtech scene to discover this matter:
The next are a number of the highlights from the panel dialogue.
From Upcycling to Worth Maximization
Leong’s start-up has developed proprietary expertise to extract proteins, fibers, and different helpful compounds from numerous forms of agrifood processing waste. A few of these compounds have important dietary worth and can be utilized in dietary supplements and purposeful meals, together with its diabetic-friendly, zero-starch, zero-cholesterol noodles constituted of brewery and malting sidestreams. Different extracts have use as bio-scaffolds in cutting-edge industries together with cultivated meat manufacturing.
“When most individuals speak about repurposing meals waste right this moment, they speak about ‘upcycling’,” with many agrifood producers fairly comfortable to have sustainability-themed start-ups take their waste away without spending a dime,” she stated. This enables them to exhibit their waste has been handled in a extra environmentally pleasant means than landfill; for instance, with it ending up as feedstock for biogas manufacturing in an anerobic digester.
However Leong argued {that a} change in company considering is required, and that the by-now mainstream language of ‘upcycling’ not matches the invoice.
“One of many challenges is to alter mindsets,” she stated. “We have to open minds to assume past upcycling, to start enthusiastic about how [they] can extract most worth from their waste. I don’t assume we should always assume solely by way of ‘cut back, re-use, recycle’. In addition to that, we needs to be enthusiastic about maximizing the worth of our waste.”
In different phrases, we have to see agrifood waste as a enterprise alternative, somewhat than merely as an issue that wants fixing.
On the identical time, many communities world wide – and never simply in lower-income areas – want entry to meals that may present improved diet at decrease value and decrease environmental influence, she added. “Absolutely, it is sensible for us to utilize this waste if it could actually present that diet.”
Getting C-suite Purchase-in
Dole is one multinational that seems to have already adopted this angle. Greatest often called a purveyor of bananas and pineapples, in recent times it has developed new meals and industrial merchandise from the numerous quantity of agricultural waste that outcomes from cultivating and processing these fruits.
Dole Specialty Components now accounts for a considerable share of the group’s total revenues, and Ooi shared some recommendation to different agrifood corporates who may be occupied with taking the waste valorization plunge.
“I’ll say one thing first: It’s a really tough enterprise,” he admitted. “However that doesn’t imply I don’t advocate it.”
If waste is to turn out to be a profitable income supply, then one should return to enterprise fundamentals.
“There are solely two issues you have to take into consideration: the primary is what’s the nutritious half or the precious half you may get from this waste stream? The second is quantity: Are you producing sufficient of this waste sidestream so that you can truly begin a enterprise?”
He continued, “For those who exit to your [prospective] clients they are going to ask, ‘What’s the value?’ and ‘Is that this protected?’ The sustainability comes later.”
Don’t Overlook the Social Side
Poh identified that it isn’t simply firm executives that want convincing; typically, it’s ‘Joe Public’, too.
Otolith Enrichment, the social enterprise he based in 2017, goals to do that by direct engagement and getting the general public’s arms soiled – fairly actually.
“It’s Singapore’s first and solely round ecosystem positioned inside a residential space, and we settle for meals waste that’s contributed by companies in addition to households,” he defined.
It operates its black soldier fly farm in a Singapore public housing property, acquiring kitchen meals waste from native residents and colleges to feed its larvae.
The frass (excrement and particles) from the larvae is used as a biofertilizer in native fruit and vegetable patches. The larvae themselves are fed to edible fish that inhabit an aquaponics system; the fishes’ excrement enriches the water within the system, which in turns feeds leafy greens and different indoor-grown crops.
Native residents and schoolkids are inspired to roll up their sleeves and assist out on the undertaking.
Given the investor curiosity round waste-valorizing insect farms – corporations like Ynsect and Innovafeed have raised tons of of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in enterprise funding between them – I requested Poh why he had determined to go down the social enterprise route, with revenue a secondary consideration. “It simply got here naturally,” he stated, noting that circularity and environmental sustainability had been passions of his for a very long time.
Echoing this and Ooi’s earlier caveat that meals waste valorization is “a really tough enterprise,” Leong stated “I wouldn’t say I obtained into this enterprise; I might say I obtained into this ardour. As a result of it is vitally onerous as a enterprise, and so it undoubtedly needs to be a ardour, too.”
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For a deeper dive into the alternatives round mitigation and valorization of agrifood waste streams, please maintain a watch out for Cleantech Group’s upcoming Agrifood Waste Mitigation Sector Perception, publishing quickly.
