Food and the circular economy

Just finished teaching a two week course for students in China.  It was a great experience, bit intense for all of us, but rewarding at the same time.  Thank you to the university that gave me the opportunity and the students who enrolled.  

In the course, I included some papers about the circular economy in relation to food.  What seems to be going on is a rethink of what food is in supply chains.  Food could be considered a secondary resource.  And this means that it could go back to earlier processes of production and supply.  Elements of food that cannot go back could then be decomposed.  Food could then be catalogued as edible or non edible, the former also considered as surplus as the following diagram aims to show:

Source:  Teigiserova et al, 2020, doi:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.136033 

In this context, there is is scope to apply our creativity in making sure that food is not wasted and its overproduction prevented.  There are experiences around the world that show this.  For instance, my friend Carmen, a very experienced consultant in ecosystems told me recently about regenerative agriculture, a new 'technology' that aims to protect the soil from damaging practices and renew it more adequately than with intensive agriculture.  The downside of this could be that feeding larger populations is not yet possible with this type of agriculture.  And there are important costs involved.  

In terms of the circular economy, food could also be reused with the help of technologies like anaerobic digestion or AD.  With colleagues from other UK universities and Leap-AD, we are currently looking at the feasibility of implementing this technology in university campuses.  As mentioned in a previous post, there is the issue of how decision makers see feasibility in terms of long-term costs and benefits.  

In addition, universities are also subject to league tables like the People and Planet.  One possible way forward is to collect and show data about our efforts to create awareness in our student populations, using behavioural theories like nudge.  Another is to use other, intelligent technologies (i.e. sensors) to detect changes in food waste and help decision makers react more instantly to them.  

My course also included the use of systems techniques like the rich picture and creativity ones to foster divergent and convergent thinking.  We also looked at six sigma and lean to improve processes.  A quick review of lean in the hospitality, restaurants and catering sector showed that there are important developments to help reduce waste in terms of time and food production.  What is less clear is how this sector is moving or could move towards preventing food waste.  

Perhaps this means that there are big challenges to do so.  And in addressing them, one thing that could really help is to consider circular economies as systems, where different elements interact to generate diverse purposes, some of which need to be further studied if not nurtured.  Not only economic or regenerative purposes, but those related to improving the quality of life of everyone if possible.  There is scope to enrich circular economy food programmes with this idea.  And use techniques or methods that could help us align if not revisit purposes.