The Food Innovation Centre, based at the University of Nottingham, has turned the spotlight on the issue of food waste in the latest in a series of factsheets.
One third of all food produced globally ends up as waste, which equates to millions of tonnes of food wasted around the world every year. The new factsheet series is designed to help SMEs in the food and drink sector to reduce their waste by including useful information on how to calculate the cost of waste, supply chain risks, environmental, legal and policy issues.
It lists five key areas for businesses to target and five key actions to tackle food waste.
Richard Worrall, who runs the Driving Research and Innovation project at the Food Innovation Centre, said: “The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates that food waste causes a global economic, environmental and social cost of $2.6 trillion a year and is responsible for 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
“Food waste is a huge issue and it’s something that the Food Innovation Centre is keen to help reduce. We’ve worked on a number of projects with SMEs to help them cut their waste or to make new products from by-products that would otherwise have gone to waste.”
One SME that has taken advantage of the free support offered to Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire food and drink businesses by the Food Innovation Centre is Nottingham-based SPG Innovation, which specialises in the commercialisation of Intellectual Property in food, life sciences and agritech.
Innovation manager at SPG Innovation, Rebecca McDowell, said: “It’s great to have a resource like the Food Innovation Centre available to help us and other SMEs with key issues such as waste reduction.”
The Food Innovation Centre
The Food Innovation Centre, based at the Bioenergy and Brewing Science building at the University of Nottingham’s Sutton Bonington campus, offers free support to eligible small and medium-sized food and drink manufacturers in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire under the Driving Research and Innovation project – a three-year project that runs until the end of December 2022.
Part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) via the D2N2 LEP, the project is run by the Food Innovation Centre at the University of Nottingham School of Biosciences, in conjunction with the Chemistry Innovation Laboratory in the School of Chemistry and Institute for Advanced Manufacturing and in association with the Midlands Engine. It is a unique collaboration project that provides free specialist innovation support to small and medium-sized businesses.
It has provided free support to almost 200 small and medium-sized food and drink manufacturers in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire so far, with new product development, processing, packaging and sustainability just some of the expertise they’ve shared.
For more information about the Food Innovation Centre, to access the Food Waste Management and Valorisation factsheet, or to get in touch with experts who can help with the issue, visit their website.
