Nibs, etc. Granola on sale at the British grocery store Waitrose.
Waitrose
Wasted food is a big problem. According to figures published by households, retailers and catering companies UN environmental program in 2024. It is also expensive: the Estimated World Bank This lost or waxed food cost $ 1.2 billion in 2020.
This is a problem that the food entrepreneur Chloé Stewart first became aware as a young adult traveling in different parts of the world. Seeing plates stacked in places like Beijing and Boston and having the feeling that “there is no way that someone ends it all” made him angry, she said.
“It is actually criminal, the fact that we are not mandated to find better use for the food that is found in the discharge,” she said during a video call with CNBC.
Stewart's food activity, Nibs, etc., started like a blog where she wrote on “poorly understood” ingredients such as cocoa feathers – small pieces of fermented cocoa beans that are used to make chocolate – as well as explored how to cook with parts of the fruits and vegetables that are generally discarded, such as the seeds scratched by a pump. Stewart calls them “recycled” rather than waste, due to their potential as a full -fledged ingredients.
In 2018, Stewart began to make granola, savory crackers and banana bunters in its kitchen, selling them to the high -end district market in London. A freshly pressed juice support was nearby, and it started making recipes from the remaining pulp – the seeds and the skin that would otherwise be thrown away.
“Juice Pulp is only” waste “because it comes out of the bad end of a juicer, but in fact this is where all the good things are, and it's full of fiber,” said Stewart. As her business grew, she experienced different fruits, set up on Apple Pulp that it comes from a cider manufacturer in the Kent English county. It has become the key ingredient for Nibs granola, etc. And represents 25% of its crackers, and Stewart now sells Nib products, etc. Among high -end British retailers, including Selfridges and Waitrose.
Other types of so-called food waste can be recycled in this way, said Stewart, and feathers, etc. Develops a chip -based potato style snack as well as cereals spent from the brewing process, an ingredient that could otherwise become animal food. She also works on a digestive cookie – a sweet snack based on popular flour in the United Kingdom – using a rapeseed meal, the by -product of rapeseed oil production. These two new products can be made from 40% to 50% recycled ingredients, said Stewart.
“Redesign” food
The company of Chloé Stewart, Nibs, etc., produces food from “recycled” ingredients.
Nibs etc.
The food industry can become “Positive nature“According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, a charity focused on the circular economy. It can regenerate rather than exhausting natural resources, for example by using cultures that were otherwise wasted, said the charity.
Some of the Nibs products, etc. was among the winners of a recent food “redesign” challenge organized by the Foundation. The other winners included Hodmedod pasta based on “wrinkled” pea, a harvest that could otherwise be plowed in the ground if its harvest time is missed, and toast, a beer brewed with excess bread.
Beth Mander, who supervised the “Big Food Redem Challenge” of the charity, which announced winners in February, said that the broader objective of the initiative is to influence companies to produce food in a more regenerative way. “Our great hope is that every time … You go to a supermarket and you choose products on the shelf, you can be sure that nature is better because of your choices,” said CNBC via a video call.
This could mean less intensive agriculture, the growth of a diversified range of crops or the addition of ingredients to products that reduce their environmental impact, according to the website of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. One of these ingredients is marrying, a mixture of algae which can be added to the burgers to provide a salty taste, while reducing the proportion of meat in the 25%hamburger.
The Seaweed Company cultivates algae in Mulroy Bay in the county of Donegal, Ireland, for some of its products.
Aluxum | E + | Getty images
The algae does not provide an “ocean flavor”, according to Hannah Weise, director of marketing and commercial communication at the Seaweed Company, which makes the seam mixture. Instead, said Weise, he “adds justification and … (a) a beautiful texture, because it contains where it can absorb a lot of water, and it also adds this Umami flavor”. Algae contains proteins – up to 32% of its dry weight – And it is grow up Without fertilizer, but is not yet used to its full potential as a food product in the United States and in Europe, said Weise during a video call with CNBC.
“Our goal is really to make food supply chains more sustainable and greener through algae,” she said.
While sewing is currently being developed, the algae company focuses on Nomet, a Belgian kibble made of algae instead of more traditional shrimp. Nomet is sold in Bioplanet stores in Belgium, and the objective is to extend to other channels and more European countries this year.
Several of the Big Food Redesign Challenge products are on sale in Waitrose stores in the United Kingdom, which is part of the grocer's efforts to combat environmental depletion caused by food production, according to the director of the main environment of the company, Ben Thomas.
“The food system is not very good. It is a major contributor to environmental degradation, climate change and loss of biodiversity … Essentially, we are part of the problem, so we must be part of the solution,” said Thomas to CNBC by video call. (Waitrose's “Farming for Nature” initiative aims to help 2,000 farmers move to regenerative practices, for example.)
A nature in mind is held in a Waitrose store.
Waitrose
A problem is to communicate the meaning of “regenerative” to buyers. Although foods produced organically are recognized by consumers in the United Kingdom, terms like “upcycled” are less well understood. The products of the Recontrolled Challenge of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation are marketed using the expression “nature in mind”, which appears on stands in store and online, but Thomas said that there was a way to go before people fully understand what it means.
Small production cycles can mean that recycled products are at the price of the upper end, with a 360g pack of Nibs, etc. But the food entrepreneur Stewart hopes that the recycled ingredients could go the dominant current. “It is normal in the first days that the … concept upcycled and the products is a little more.
