In his latest post Dr Julian Partfitt, a leading expert on food waste, talks about the significant role that social innovations can play in tackling food surplus.

This is an arrival in the UK and across Europe of a new cohort of social entrepreneurs whose innovations are acting on the food waste mountain.

Given the scale of the problem – the amount of food wasted and the wide scale issue of food poverty – it is clear that this movement has a significant role to play in finding ways to capture food surpluses that would otherwise have been wasted, either through the creation of new food products or through innovations that enable it to be redistributed to charities.

Between 2012 and 2015 I acted as a special advisor for The European FUSIONS project[1]  which tested different approaches to social innovation across Europe to address food waste through a series of feasibility studies, including:

• Disco BôCô Project – ‘a second life for delicious unsold food by cooking jams & chutneys to the sound of music’ (France)

• Surplus Food Project (Denmark) – supporting the development of apps that connect local organizations (shelters, crisis and refugee centres) to businesses with surplus food (retailers, restaurants, and catering companies)

• Gleaning – creating networks across the EU to encourage the picking or harvesting of fruit and vegetables not harvested by farmers, and redistributing it to charities

Over the coming years we shall see the mainstreaming of these sorts of innovations in addressing retail and supply chain food surpluses. Anthesis is already looking at the role of innovation and technology in tackling food waste.

As well, our client Tesco has teamed up with the entrepreneurs FoodCloud and redistribution charity FareShare on the ‘Community Food Connection’ program, which aims to deliver Tesco’s ambitious commitment ‘that no food surplus will be wasted in Tesco’s UK operations by 2017 and that by 2020 there is the commitment to offer food surplus for donation across all Tesco’s central European stores.’ The program in the UK uses the FoodCloud app to connect available food surplus at stores with charities that provide meals for those in need.

Anthesis has vast experience in relation to addressing food waste, please contact us on the form below to find out more.