Food Is Wasted - Documenting the issue of food waste

Oddbox is a London-based box scheme that works directly with farmers and growers to take their wonky and surplus produce – so food that might otherwise have gone to waste -  then deliver them straight to their members’ doors at a price that’s fair for both the farmer and their members.

I spoke to Emilie and Deepak - the two founders of the company, about how they started off, how they sourced their produce, what they’ve witnessed, and what they feel needs to be done to make a more sustainable food system. As we discuss, it’s evident that things need to change, and that despite lots of noise being created by supermarkets around the issue of food waste, they unfortunately are unlikely to lead that change.

It was a great chat, and they give some really valuable insights as to why there is a vital need for the work they are doing, and others that are motivated not by the bottom-line, but by the desire to create positive change in a sustainable manner, and through a long-term approach to providing people access to seasonal, nutritious, affordable food.

In this episode of the Food Is Wasted podcast, I’ll be speaking to Christina O’Sullivan from Feedback – a London-based organisation running several campaigns related to food waste – such as the Gleaning Network and the Pig Idea – both of which feature on the Food Is Wasted website.

Feedback recently published a report called ‘The Food Waste Scorecard’, authored by Christina, which ranked the 10 biggest supermarkets in the UK according to their performance in reducing food waste.

The supermarkets were ranked using available data against the food use hierarchy, which requires that prevention be the priority towards tackling waste. You can see visual of the hierarchy in the show notes,

Tesco came out top of the rankings, having adopted measures including the publishing of third party audited food waste data – the first supermarket to do so. Signing up to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal 12.3, of halving food waste from farm to fork by 2030 – again the first supermarket to do so. As well as being, committed to extending transparency to include measurement of food waste in its supply chain.

At the bottom of the rankings was Waitrose, which has done very little in terms of transparency and action. Hopefully the publication of this report, and the publicity it’s getting, will motivate them to act more responsibly.

There’s a huge room for improvement from all supermarkets, and really there needs to be policy written by government to push for more meaningful and sustained action by all supermarkets – voluntary targets, such as those set out in the Courtauld Commitment 2025, are evidently not sufficient.

When I was over in Copenhagen last year for a few days, I got in touch with Selina Juul – founder of the organisation Stop Wasting Food - to see if she would be willing and able to be interviewed, and she very kindly said she was. The day we arranged to meet Selina was being interviewed and participating in a panel discussion at a national radio station, which I was able to sit in on. After which we found a suitable space to conduct this interview.

Those people who keep an eye on all things food waste will no doubt be aware of Selina and the work she does. She has achieved an incredible amount both as an individual – from speaking in front of the European Parliament and the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, to being awarded Dane of the Year in 2014 – and through the Stop Wasting Food movement, which Selina started in 2008, which itself has won many awards and contributed significantly to raising awareness and reducing food waste in Denmark, by engaging politicians, supermarkets and households. The organisation has also been a key contributor to the EU’s own resolutions against food waste.

This podcast is a brief interview I conducted with the chef Tom Hunt. Tom is not just an award-winning chef and restaurant owner, but also a food writer, sustainability consultant and campaigner, as well as author of the book The Natural Cook.

Tom's response to the issue of food waste is to promote what he calls 'Root to Fruit Eating', which we touch upon briefly in the interview, and which entails – eating for pleasure, eating whole foods, and eating the best food you can.

I met up with Tom at a recent event he was hosting and talking at here in London, in collaboration with the Thomson Reuters Foundation. It was a very last-minute interview, so I had almost no time to prepare, but it was a great opportunity to learn more about Tom's work and philosophy on the topic of food waste.

In this episode, I'm speaking to Travis Andren from Seedling in Philadelphia, in the United States - an organisation working on bringing efficient forms of urban-based, vertical farming and aquaponics into the mainstream.

A lot of the focus on reducing avoidable food waste is placed on the household, or changing supermarket practices, all of which are important in addressing the flaws in the current system. But what if a new agricultural system was introduced to reduce the dependency on the depleted soils of rural land - one that feeds our ever-growing cities from within the cities themselves, and essentially eliminates the potential for food waste by avoiding food losses, allowing for a diversity of secondary markets, and as a last resort - say if there is a crop failure - using the food to produce energy to sustain the system.

That's exactly what Seedling aims to do - to create a source of locally produced food for retailers, academic institutions, and the catering and hospitality industries, with a minimal impact on the environment. The nature of this type of farming not only reduces the amount of avoidable food waste being produced, but provides a more efficient, lower-impact means of feeding cities.

I talk to Travis about the viability of vertical farming, the impact it has compared to conventional, rural-based agriculture, and much more.

In this episode I'm speaking to Cristina Reni from Food for Soul - an organisation based in Italy, set up by the chef Massimo Bottura, who runs the number one restaurant in the world.

The organisation aims to encourage public and private organisations to create community kitchens around the world, and was created after Massimo was involved in setting up a soup kitchen in an abandoned theatre during the Expo 2015 in Milan, feeding vulnerable members of the community using food left over from the Expo each day, rescuing it from going to waste. He was involved with a similar initiative at the Rio Olympics in 2016.

Thanks to the work of Food for Soul, these soup kitchens - or refettorios - are still up and running, and it's recently been announced that they will be opening a refettorio in London this June, during London Food Month.

I spoke to Cristina, who is a project manager at Food for Soul about how the organisation functions, the impact it’s having, and much more.

Just a say that this was the first time I had carried out an interview via Skype, and I was also starting to come down with a cold, so I'm not the most dynamic in this interview unfortunately, but Cristina more than makes up for that with her passion and enthusiasm for the great work that Food for Soul is doing.

If you would like to learn more about the work Food for Soul is doing, visit their website at - http://foodforsoul.it

If you would like to learn more about the issue of food waste and the work being done by organisations like Food for Soul, then be sure to visit the Food Is Wasted website at http://foodiswasted.com - and sign up for the newsletter if you would like to be kept informed of new articles, interviews and initiatives.

In this episode I'm speaking to Sophie from Elysia - a new start-up social enterprise which buys food that would otherwise have gone to waste from various local, artisan suppliers at a discounted rate, and uses them to create meals to order, as well as catering for events.

I caught up with Sophie during one such event, and she shared with me the story behind Elysia, how it functions, and the impact her company is having on reducing avoidable food waste.

Then we met up a second time when she was meeting with chef Emily Roux, daughter of Michel Roux Jr, who has been providing Sophie with mentorship and support in developing her dishes.

I spoke to Emily about her experiences as a chef in relation to food waste both here in the UK, and in France, and what she has gained and learnt about the issue from her work with Sophie.

Sophie has been very kind to provide listeners of the podcast with a discount on their first purchase from Elysia, details of which I will share at the end of the recording.

In this episode I'm speaking to Pete Loughins from SOS Northern Ireland's Food Programme, which gathers food and other goods from supermarkets that would otherwise go to waste, and redistributes them to other non-profit organisations which are providing frontline support to vulnerable members of the community.

What distinguishes SOS NI from other redistribution initiatives is their focus on capturing fresh produce - collecting bread and other baked goods, fruit and vegetables, rather than canned and non-perishable produce which most others capture. They gather the food 6 nights a week, distributing it the following morning to ensure it is still fresh.

This is the first in a two-part series - the second episode will be released in 2 weeks time, and shares the stories of the volunteers as they deliver the food, and representatives of the recipient organisations.