Tech company Capgemini is teaming up with the Consumer Goods Forum to come up with a whole new model for eliminating food waste across all industries, Sustainability Magazine reported.
"We're seeing a shift in mindset," said Sharon Bligh, director for health and sustainability at CGF, according to Sustainability Magazine. "Waste is no longer just a cost to minimize, but a resource to optimise."
If wasted food is a resource, it's a plentiful one.
According to an estimate by Capgemini, 1.3 billion tons of food go to waste around the globe each year. CGF added that all of that food waste is worth $940 billion to the global economy, and it adds more than 3.5 billion tons of heat-trapping gases to the air annually.
"Our Coalition is moving from simply reducing avoidable food waste to designing waste out of the system entirely enabling value creation at every stage," said Bligh.
With that goal in mind, the two organizations have created the Food Waste Coalition of Action. This project seeks to redefine food waste as a solvable problem, not an inevitability, and to show how addressing it produces value for companies. For example, they could avoid the costs of overstock, storage, and landfill fees; follow environmental regulations to avoid fines; and tap into regenerative agriculture practices that make better use of resources.
The program has also identified key obstacles in its way.
First of all, there is a cultural expectation of endless supplies of perfect-looking food, which leads to overstocking and discarding imperfect food. Businesses also focus inward instead of collaborating, and the value chain is broken up into many individual suppliers, manufacturers, and retailers.
But this program shows a way forward.
According to Sustainability Magazine, Kees Jacobs, vice president of consumer goods and retail at Capgemini, said, "Through our work with the Consumer Goods Forum and the Food Waste Coalition for Action, we're pinpointing the business processes that drive loss and waste across the value chain. We are laying the groundwork for a transformation that is not limited to the areas under the control of manufacturers and retailers, but truly systemic."
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