Have you thought about what you will do with waste that is generated from running your operations? Sometimes the cost of production to bring one’s precious product or service into reality is quite high. It’s almost as if this cost causes physical pain, enough to wince sharply.
Many corporations have turned this around turning waste into by products or filtering this waste into another system entirely which results in greater profit. Did you know that cornflakes began as cooked wheat that had gone stale but was then toasted? Golden Ray a popular butter substitute for many Caribbean dishes is actually a by product of butter itself!
Recycling food waste has been around for quite some time but it is now a major trend in global innovation.
Science is the key.
Bio Bean is an award winning green energy company that has industrialised the process of recycling waste coffee grounds into advanced biofuels. This is a startling innovation! Think about it.
Coffee is the world’s most consumed drink.
Some believe they cannot even function without it. As a result the coffee market is huge for all sorts of products coming out of this one crop. Therefore the amount of remnant coffee grounds is staggering. Now this has all changed with bio bean; waste repursposed.
It’s everybody’s business
We’ve mentioned Fo Po Food Powder so many times on the blog however they are truly making waves. The business has been featured on the Huffington Post, Time, CNN Phillipines and among several other blogs and interest sites.
The team is just coming off a very successful kickstarter campagin after winning the Ben & Jerry’s (Yes the one and only Ice cream company!) Join-Our-Core-Competition, of which 400 social-startups were invited to be a part of.
Their efforts in freeze drying near expired fruits and vegetables into powder preserves the shelf live exponentially while maintaining its nutrition and even opening the doors for brand new food experimentation.
We’ve been featured in English, French, Portuguese, Polish and also Dutch – wouldn’t it be FoPantastic if we had an article in every language on Earth one day? – Fo Po Team!
Thinking outside the box
Of course reworking food waste is a reactive strategy but no one said you couldn’t be proactive about it. Rather than allowing produce to reach the stage of wastage, KinoSol has built a mobile, solar dehydrator which increases market accessibility, reduces post harvest loss and increases nutrition for subsistence farmers around the world.
As a mobile contraption, produce can be dehydrated as soon as it is harvested from the field. They have recently launched the fifth version of the product in Uganda to great results with the device working much better in warmer climates. Also coming off a competition win, Kinosol is set to truly make a dent in food waste with their invention.
In your business management activity consider wisely how you can reduce your costs by reworking your waste. Here’s a list of businesses that are doing just that. In fact these businesses listed on the Food Startups Podcast depend on waste for their operations. Stay dedicated!
