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- 🍗 #004 — Food Waste
🍗 #004 — Food Waste
Food waste occurs along the entire food supply chain.
Welcome to Climate Brief #004. This is part of a 10-episode series on the latest climate tech and trends.
Check out previous episodes ⬇️
Today we’re talking 🍗 Food Waste 🍗
Note: Food waste is one of the many issues than spans all parts of ESG. The majority of the world is food insecure. Climate Brief only focuses on the environment impact.
📣 TLDR
A lot of food is wasted between production and consumption. This leads to lost revenue and unnecessary emissions.

😬 Problem
Food waste occurs along the entire food supply chain. From farms and manufacturing facilities, to distribution and shipping, to grocery stores and restaurants, to end-consumers.
According to the EPA, food waste contributes ~170M metrics tons of CO2 equivalent GHG emissions. Equal to 42 coal-fired power plants and ~25% of current warming.
🎯 Solution
Redesign food ingredients, packaging, and supply chain to be more sustainable.
💪🏼 Organizations
Spoiler Alert helps major consumer packaged goods brands manage excess and slow-moving inventory
Shelf Engine has an automated prediction engine that predicts the perfect amount of perishable goods to order.
Afresh’s Fresh Operating System uses AI to track demand and manage orders for fresh produce in grocery stores.
Full Harvest is B2B marketplace that connects suppliers with excess inventory to restaurants and other food providers.
Martie resells discarded, rebranded food from groceries stores
GoodrCo donates excess food to local nonprofits and partners with organic waste haulers to ensure proper disposal.
Recelery lets users keep and see “virtual pantries” from nearby users and resell unused items.
Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods deliver “ugly food” that isn’t sold to groceries stores.
Too Good To Go connects people with restaurants and stores offering surplus unsold food.
Freshflow helps retailers stock the right amount of perishable goods with an AI-powered forecasting platform.
Choco provides a digital platform connecting restaurants and their suppliers in order to optimize their food supply chain.
Replate redistributes donated surplus food from businesses to serve communities in need.
⚡️ Opportunities
Use upcycled ingredients that would have been food waste. Ingredients cost less and offer premium pricing for providing more sustainable foods. Imperfect Foods, Dianas, and Regrained are all Upcycled Certified by Upcycled Food Association.
Global supply chains are vulnerable to a variety of disruptions. See the Suez Canal blockage. Risk analytics and insurance can mitigate losses. Parsyl provides data-powered insurance for cold supply chains in food and health.
Alternative protein can have a longer shelf life and less methane emissions than regular meat. Beyond Meat makes plant-based meats. Betterfish makes plant-based seafood.
Design packaging to be reused. Coke, Nestle, and PepsiCo are experimenting with different types of circular food packaging made of recycled or plant-based ingredients.
Use AI and machine learning to forecast disruptions. Climate AI monitors supply chain weather risk.
⚠️ Challenges
Changing consumer behavior is hard. It requires education. Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods have done well embracing the “ugly food” mantra.
The cold supply chain is hard. Shipping perishable food requires strict temperature controls and meeting regulations. Project44 is one of many startups providing real-time supply chain visibility.
Restaurants, grocery stores, and retail are low margin businesses. Innovation budgets are small. But small increases in cost reduction can have big margin impact.
The US recycling infrastructure is lagging. Many “recycled” items just go to a landfill. RoadRunner Recycling and AMP Robotics are making a dent.
😈 Devil’s Advocate
Food waste isn’t a problem for people problem. It’s a business problem.
The majority of food waste happens before it reaches end-consumers. But consumer demand also drives change.
The environmental impact of food waste is minor compared to the social impact.
Food waste is only of the many problems that fall into multiple parts of ESG.
🚀 Takeaways
Food waste means lost revenue and unnecessary emissions.
Upcycled ingredients, alternative protein, and reusable packaging are a few solutions to reduce food waste.
Shipping perishable goods is challenging. Better supply chain visibility can reduce food loss.
🔗 Dive Deeper
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