Food TechConnect Meet-up on Food Waste and Innovation
“Forty percent of food is never eaten and accounts for a large percentage of waste that is sent to landfills,” This was the first statement I heard after tip-toeing late to the Food Waste Meetup held last night at LMHQ put together from FoodTechConnect.
Food waste is a topic that I am advocate for because I believe of all the issues within the food system, this one is the low-hanging fruit. The problem is not lack of resources, if anything it is a surplus of such. Most of us unfortunately are repeat offenders of throwing out perfectly good food, myself included, and it is mostly done due to lack of convenient options to dispose unused food products.
I signed up for the meetup both curious and excited to see what new innovations were being created to strategically tackle issues of food waste issue specifically in New York City, which I presume would be significantly higher than other U.S. cities.
I walked away impressed by the presentations by mostly startups and some well-established business that are all trying to solve this problem from different angles. A few of the companies that presented:
Food Rescue 412: is a grassroot organization which connects donors of uneaten food with non-profit organizations . The service will have some trouble scaling as it relies on the social capital of volunteers to pick up the food and deliver it. Businesses have the benefit of getting rid of food without wasting it.
Re-nuble: produces a liquid based fertilizer for hydroponic farming out of food waste as an economical alternative to chemical fertilizers.
Mintscrap: software for restaurants to reduce the amount of food waste generated by providing analytics of waste data. It provides an incentive for restaurants to reduce waste by showing them potential cost savings changing certain inventory processes and inefficiencies throughout the restaurant’s operations.
Baldor Specialty Foods: produce and specialty food distributor that is very far from being a startup and has actually been in business since 1946. This presentation was the most surprising and interesting to me because this well-established company has decided to pivot its focus on food recovery and source reduction. The company is trying to use all its produce, especially those considered “ugly” by the general market by either drying certain foods or repurposing them for human consumption.
I left the event with a little more confident than when I first walked in because the presentations were more than just people throwing out good ideas. These concepts have actually materialized in a way that incentives businesses and consumers to start paying attention to food waste issues.