Food Waste is Solvable

But I can kind of already feel myself like sliding out the door to go for dinner that was earlier in my kitchen, And now I'm here in the Solvable studios, and I'm wondering, is there anybody who can help me

with this? I need a hero. If only one of the world's most innovative thinkers was dealing with what to do with rich people's food waste, I may have Higgins and you're listening to Solvable, Well, I think food waste is one of the lowest hanging fruit, and the great thing is that we can solve it by eating and enjoying food together instead of throwing it away and that's something that everyone can engage in in a way that

saves money, reduces environmental impact, and can build companionship between humans. That is a vision that is not unattainable, and I find it very, very attractive. That's Tristram Stewart. He's an author and campaigner with a laser focus on the environmental and social impacts of food. You know, I actually heard of Tristram because a few years ago he put together this dinner for five thousand Londoners and meal was made entirely of food scrap that would have otherwise gone to waste.

That's his solvable It's eliminating food waste. That's it. It may sound simple, but the problem is just gigantic. It's not just me. You know. Globally, we throw out about one point three billion tons of food a year. That's a third of all the food that we grow. Inequality plays a huge role in this. Of course. Very little food in poor countries is thrown out by consumers it's too precious. But in wealthy countries, especially here in the United States and in Canada, around forty percent of wasted

food is thrown out by consumers. So what to do. The conversation you're about to hear, offers us guidance. Now you've already heard from three of our Solvable interviews so far, Malcolm Gladwell, Jacob Weisberg, and Ann Applebaum. Now we meet the fourth. It's Ahmed Ali Akbar. You might know him from his own podcast, See Something, Say Something about what America Muslims are talking about right now, and we are

thrilled to have him Unsolvable. To begin, Ahmed asks Tristram Stewart about smart ways to avoid waste, from saying yes to ugly bananas to making beer from our kids breadcrusts. And listen out too for big changes he's helping to make in the entrepreneurial world, as well as transforming food waste legislation in the UK. Okay, here we go. It's Tristram Stewart and Ahmed ali Akbar. Welcome to the program. Welcome to Solvable, Tristram, thanks very much for having me.

So let's start really big. Global food waste is a massive problem. Do you think that it's a solvable problem. Yes. So the problem, of course is a food production itself, and a large amount of the food waste that is being generated can be designed out can be eliminated through behavior change, through improved business practice, through better government policy.

Those things are eminently solvable. So myself, as a consumer who is concerned with reducing my impact, what can I do you know in that process from going to the supermarket to bring it harm? And I will stop you in your tracks and say, the first thing that you could probably do to help yourself avoid food wastes not go to the supermarket at all if you possibly can

help it. Okay. The reason for that, and I'm not being entirely flippant here, is that the supermarket grocery supply system has waste and surplus as a cornerstone of its business model. It's almost impossible for a supermarket to avoid waste entirely. The entire marketing model of a supermarket is to create a cornucopian display of plenty. And the reason why they do that is because, having invested billions of dollars in working out what we Homo sapiens, this very

sophisticated great ape will respond to. We have evolved over two million years in an environment of scarcity, and we are hardwired therefore, when we see abundance to take to hoard, to glut to feast, and that hardwiring comes very powerfully into action when we walk down those supermarket aisles, and the result is that we buy more than we need and we throw a third of it away. I think for most of us, what we see as food waste, we can't envision that like massive picture you've given us.

We just see that, you know, those things being wasted at the supermarket, and then we bring home vegetables and they rite the milk rats. That's what happens with me, and then we throw it out. Can you talk a little bit about how you effectively made that behavioral change and sort of business change as well that made led to that reduction. Well to address some of the business changes.

I mean, one of the issues that we highlight is the issue of ugly fruit and vegetables, and we immediately affected a change on the part of the supermarkets who started stocking cosmetically imperfect vegetables, partly because they had been hurt so badly by the press around the campaigning on this issue. And once they'd seen that there was public demand, of course they responded and started supplying to that demand.

Instead of saying, oh, well, you know the reason why we have these cosmetic standards is because people expect perfection. By changing public attitudes, we changed corporate policy and that massively reduced food waste in those supermarket supply chains. And as I say, that started here in the United Kingdom, but it has become a global phenomenon now pretty much every Western supermarket chain has in some way dabbled in the issue of fruit and vegetables that are cosmetically imperfect

and try to kind of sell those to customers. And they're basically being stoked alongside, you know, the sort of supermodel fruit that makes it out there most of the time, Like they're just are are they being labeled separately? Because I think part of the issue here is like how does the consumer know to invest in things that are less wasteful. Well, that's a very good question. Of course, every supermarket chain has a different brand and a different

approach to this issue. So if you go to Well in the UK, we have a supermarket chain here called Waitros, some more upmarket chain for people who kind of care about where their food is from, and they're absolutely the weather blemished apples will have a story about how it hailed in the orchards in the autumn, and that's why this russeting on. You know, they'll have all of that narrative. You go to Tesco, which is a completely different more like the warm Heart of the UK. They don't tell

that story to their customers. They just sell those wonky carrots cheaper than the cosmetically premium carrots, and that's what their demographic is most interested in. So you can be helping to reduce that food waste without even necessarily knowing it in that store. So I think everyone, and quite rightly,

has got a different approach to solving the problem. What are some policies that you want to see the world's governments and corporations implement in order to reduce food waste at a noticeable level over the next sixty years or so. So let me start by saying most of my work

has been directed at the people directly. What is it that we humans need to do to reform our food system and our system as a whole to ensure that this environmental and social calamity that we find ourselves in the midstaff does not reach its logical conclusion, namely that the mass species extinction event that we are causing very largely through our food system. How do we galvanize human

action directly through behavior change, through organization, through entrepreneurship. We can do almost all of it without the intervention of governments. I believe that said governments clearly have a role to play, and there are a number of things that governments should be looking at. The one I will start with is farm subsidies. At the moment, the USA and Europe gather massive budgets through levying taxes on their populations for farm subsidies.

That money is currently being grotesquely misspent to support a commodity industrial agricultural system to produce exactly the kinds of food that are both nutritionally less than optimal and are

environmentally harmful. That is not a good use of public money, and the government of the USA and the governments of Europe should delink their subsidies from such poor public service and instead should be paying farmers to farm the land in a way that regenerates the soil, that creates habitat that enhances the land's ability to take on and store water in the water table at the same time as

producing healthy, accessible food for everyone. What is the best way to actually make an impact such that subsidies aren't having such a massive effect on our environment. Well, but the answer to that question is exactly why I tend to start with the using of blemish bananas to make smoothies and pancakes and other nice things. Is something that you can do without getting too depressed, and that tastes good and is fun. And so starting with a nice,

hearty meal using all the food that you have. Moving on, if you feel so moved to changing your buying practices and maybe having good conversations with your friends about looking to planet Earth by making our choice, Yeah, that's a

much nicer, easier way to start. How do we change a farm subsidy system that is deeply entrenched in which some of the biggest food corporations in the world, the biggest corporations in the world, have an enormous stake when our political system, to take the US political system as a quintessential example, is itself stitched up by that financial system.

You know, the strong correlation between successful electoral candidates and the money they have at their disposal to spend on their campaigns, which is an absolutely inexorable correlation in the USA.

You ask me, how do you change that? Well, You've got to start there and delink the amount of money a candidate has from whether or lot they get elected, and then you might start having free and fair elections, and you might start getting people in public office who are not completely indebted to the corporations who benefit the financial subsidies that are being dulled out by those people when they get into government. Difficult to achieve. I mean, ultimately,

that's where we've got to go. But you ask the question, I'm afraid that's where the answer is, right. I mean, that's part of why we're having this conversation is because it can feel so daunting. And I think also one thing that really interested me in you was that you also have some sort of entrepreneurial endeavors that you've gone into around bread that would otherwise be wasted. Can you tell me a little bit more about your company that

deals with leftover bread? I will, and I'll take a step back there, since we just touched on some of the really deeply pressing and occasionally depressing need to create dramatic and swift change on planet Earth if we're to avert catastrophe, and say that most of my work is focused on mobilizing and inspiring people to act in a way that both sustains planet Earth but also sustains us and sustains us through companionship. This is a word I

absolutely love companion. Literally it breaks down Latin Colm is with and pan is bread. A companion is somebody who share food with and Wow, isn't that beautiful. It's also the nature of food to bring people together. I think. I think that's so. It is universal what you say is right, the universal human practice of building community through

sharing food in families, in localities, and indeed internationally. We build companionship and friendship through the sharing of food and this powerful way in which we can bond with each other and also bond with the earth from which all this food comes. That is why I have used food as the principal tool to communicate how we humans can

and must change our system as a whole. One of the most recent ones, which you just alluded to, was the beer that became known and is known as toast Ale, which we are now producing in several different countries in the US and the UK and elsewhere. And that is made in a very in fact an ancient way of making beer, which is to use leftover bread and other grains to make your beer. That is what beer originally was, for preserving the calories in grains that might otherwise be wasted.

And we essentially have brought the beer industry back to it. It's ancient Babylonian roots. And I discovered that you could make beer with waste bread in twenty fifteen when I was in Brussels with the Brussels Beer Project. The brewer there Sebastia showed me and I said, my goodness, I've been around the world and I've seen industrial quantities of bread being wasted in every country. It's one of the most wasted products of all and it's being wasted one

it is still perfectly good. It's kind of sandwich crusts, you know, the end slices of the loaves being wasted by the hundreds of thousands everyday day fresh bread. So that's going on all the world. Meanwhile, craft brewing has become a global phenomenon, and I've spent the last twenty years building a global food waste movement. So let's bring these three things together into a global brand called toast Ale. Obviously, we're toasting the end of food waste. We think that

bread shouldn't be wasted and neither should use. So we encourage people to drink responsibly. And so we've created this company. Sorry, now you got that's a pretty good, pretty good tagline. Oh crumbs, the puns are going to come flying now now we'll we'll move on. It is the best thing since slice bread. But the the idea is that we've made this company. We're producing beer. It's on sale. People absolutely love it. It's one Craft Beer Awards on blind

taste testing. So this is a really high quality product, quite independently of the nice story that we have at our backs. But then rather uniquely, as a company, a for profit company, we give all of our profits. One hundred percent of our distributor profits go to the charity that I founded and have spent most of my last ten years working four and that is a charity that campaigns on reforming the food system in all the ways

that we're now talking about. And in addition to that, we also share revenues with other aligned not in profits in any country that we go and work in. That's six or seven countries so far. Well, I'd say I can't wait to try it, But I don't drink alcohol, so sorry, but I think it's really interesting that I have some good news for you. I have just been handed our first bottle of a collaboration brew of low alcohol beer, which so you may yet get to try,

and you definitely deserve to. With a pun like that. Are there any other items, you know waste by products, or you know things that like the end of a sandwich bread that you wish somebody else would toastify that you don't have time to address something that's like a slammed sort of potential product that you don't have the time to do. Oh my goodness. A very large part of the last twenty years of campaigning has having created

a massive noise around food waste. Yes, I changed the policies of some big corporations, got laws passed by governments. But one of the most exciting parts of my work has been helping many entrepreneurs, dozens of entrepreneurs create businesses that mine that got gantuan mountain of food waste, the one point three billion tons of food that are wasted, and turn that food into good products that run good businesses.

So in California, there's a brilliant company that called Imperfect Produce, and that is a vegetable box scheme that delivers discounted fresh fruit and vegetables two people's doors, and exactly the way I was describing, but all using wonky product products that would otherwise have been wasted. A fantastic company. Here in the United Kingdom, we have a company called Rubies in the Rubble that makes chutneys and jams entirely at

fruit and vegetables that would otherwise be wasted. The company that makes juice called Rejuice in the UK Misfit Juicery over in the USA. I mean, I could go on all evening, but just suffice to say that the entrepreneurial spirit tackling food waste is one of the most exciting parts of this work. So, as somebody who thinks about this all the time, how do you keep positive that this enormous global problem of food waste is actually solvable

in our generation? Well, I think food waste is one of the lowest hanging fruit and the great thing is that we can solve it by eating and enjoying food together instead of throwing it away. And that's something that everyone can engage in in a way that saves money, reduces environmental impact and as I said, can build companionship between humans, and it starts in our own refrigerators, and

it moves on to the shopping aisles. And it's a very kind of reassuring thing that we can make the lives of our fellow humans better and that of the natural system that we depend on simply by ensuring that all the food we have is eaten. I think where it's rather more challenging when one looks at the global trend and sees that environmental damage, deforestation, and global warming and species extinction and not just still going in the

wrong direction. In some cases, they're still accelerating in the wrong direction. And I think we have to face the reality, which is that the probability of us putting a stop to this mass species extinction event is really quite low. For me, that doesn't mean we sit down and get depressed. For me, that means that the less likely it is that we'll win, the more energy and the more people who have to get engaged and dedicate themselves to solving

this problem. And I believe that alongside all the negative tipping points that we are facing in this world, we may also be on a tipping point socially towards the ultimate realizing that we are one species, we have one planet, and we must act as one instead of vying with each other, between different countries to have the biggest slice of the cake, and between different corporations to have a

bigger slice of the cake. At some point, I believe we will tip into a kind of global consciousness and a global governance of sort where we say, actually, this is not in anyone's interest to undermine the viability of our living planet through this wasteful and destructive way in which we're producing food. I believe that is possible, and I believe that the benefit that will bring in terms of bringing great, accessible, nutritious food that helps to regenerate

our land. That is a vision that is not unattainable, and I find it very very attractive. So trust him. If somebody is listening into this and feels like very motivated to reduce the impact, what are five things that they can do today? Buy less? That is the first thing that everyone can do. Buy less stuff. Number two, when you've bought food, just make sure every morsel is eaten. Think of the value in that food, and is sure that you squeeze every last bit out of that. Number

Three make it fun. My motto is, if you want to change the world for a better party than the people destroying it, that's such a good motto. I want to steal that. Number four, change where you buy your food. There are businesses and farms producing food in a way that looks after the health of the planet and looks after your health. Those are where we need to gravitate and give our money to, and not the massive corporations that are stripping the earth. Bear. Yeah. Number five, eat

more plants and less meat and dairy products. That is a very simple shift that we can all do to our own degree, and that will massively increase the efficiency and reduce the harm that we do through our food production system. Is there anything else that I didn't ask that you'd like to say? You can wash that food down with a can of toastale and thereby help to fund the great work of all the NGOs that are trying to solve this massive problem on behalf of us.

All the realization that we are in an extinction event and humans may be on the way out, well, that's obviously dark and frightening, But as Tristram says, the smaller our odds of making it through, the more people who will join in the fight, so we better make it fun. When I think about how best to help instead of hurt the environment, it's often something I need to stop doing. Don't fly, don't eat meat, don't buy fast fashion, and that's all good. But what I love about Tristram's philosophy

is that it's so positive. Use everything, enjoy it, Support farmers where you can. And obviously he's speaking to those of us who are lucky enough to even have a personal choice, people who have an abundance of snacks everywhere we look. In future episodes of Solvable, we're going to look at food waste in less fortunate parts of the world, where food is lost not because people don't like brown bananas, but because of poor infrastructure. The food spoils before it

even reaches them. But there's a solvable for that too, so keep listening. Solvable is a collaboration between Pushkin Industries and the Rockefella Foundation, with production by Chalk and Blade. Pushkin's executive producer is Mia LaBelle. Engineering by Jason Gambrell and the fine folks at GSI Studios. Original music composed by Pascal Wise. Special thanks to Maggie Taylor, Heather Faine, Julia Barton, Carlie Migliori, Sheriff Vincent, Jacob Weisberg, and Malcolm Gladwell.

You can learn more about solving Today's biggest problems at Rockefeller Foundation dot org slash solvable. I'm Mave Higgins, Now go solve it. Oh are you still here? I wanted to leave you with this little gem that we found from a French campaign called Inglorious Fruits and Vegetables. This is the ugly carrot. I want you to ask yourself what defines you? Is it your taste? Is it your texture? Is it what you're made of? Potassium, iron, calcium, Vitamin ABC?

Even kay you have them all. You have everything that other fruits and vegetables have. You can be whatever you want to be, juice, soup, stew, you name it. Who says you're not eligible for supermarkets? Who? You got to stop believing in yourself otherwise nobody else will when you'll be lined up in boxes that supermarkets. I want you to stand upright and feel proud but what you are, because there's nothing wrong in being ugly.