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Lidl launches city-wide drinks packaging recycling scheme

Posted on February 13, 2024 by dishanth

Shoppers will be able to deposit any single-use drinks packaging made from either PET plastic or aluminium, between 100ml and three litres in size. Barcodes must be attached and readable.

Collected packaging will be sent for recycling. Lidl is aiming to capture at least 10.5 tonnes of material every month.

The launch of the scheme is intended to go some way to preparing customers for Scotland’s nationwide deposit return scheme (DRS) for drinks packaging, which was due to launch last August but was delayed until March 2024.

Further delays could yet be announced due to backlash from some retailers, plus the fact that a UK-wide DRS is not due to launch until early 2025 at the soonest.

DRS initiatives see a levy placed on beverages, which customers can only claim back after returning their used packaging to a certified collection point for recycling.

But Lidl has elected not to add a levy to its beverages at present. Instead, customers will receive a 5p reward for every bottle or can returned, with no limit on the amount that each person can claim. They can receive the rewards as either a voucher for money off their next shop, or as a donation to Lidl’s charity partner in Scotland, STV Children’s appeal. The appeal supports children in poverty with education, mental health care, social activities and necessities like food and clothing.

Lidl GB’s chief commercial officer Richard Bourns described the initiative as “a win-win for all”.

He said: “We’re on a mission to eliminate all unnecessary waste, and with over 95% of our own-brand packaging now recyclable, reusable, or refillable we’ve been making great progress. We know that Lidl shoppers share this passion, and we hope that utilising this infrastructure, which might otherwise have been left dormant, will help to make recycling their cans and bottles even more convenient for them.”

Source edie

Can we really fuel planes with fat and sugar?

Posted on January 9, 2024 by dishanth

As the politician next to him took out his phone for a selfie, Virgin Atlantic chairman Richard Branson peered into the camera, grinned, and did a double thumbs-up. The world’s first commercial airliner to cross the Atlantic using 100% biofuel had just landed in New York.

Virgin Atlantic’s Boeing 787 was powered not by fossil fuels, but plant sugars and waste fats – a form of so-called Sustainable Aviation Fuel, or SAF. A British Conservative MP posted his smiling selfie with Branson to the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, and declared the flight “a significant UK aviation achievement”. (The flight was partly funded by the UK government.)

But not everyone is so sure that this represents the future of flying. The biomass required to make biofuel can come from a broad range of sources – plant material, food waste or even algae. While biofuels release CO2 when burned, some consider them a sustainable option because they are renewable and biomass removes some CO2 from the atmosphere as it grows.

The problem is the sheer volume of biomass needed to power an industry as fuel-hungry as aviation. One academic paper published in August estimated that, if you were to grow sugar cane and use that to make biofuels for commercial jets, you’d need 125 million hectares (482,000 sq miles) of land – roughly equivalent to the surface area of the states of California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada and Louisiana combined.

That’s a lot of land. And if you tried using waste sources of biomass alone, you wouldn’t have nearly enough to keep all the world’s planes in the air, say some experts. The airline industry is currently responsible for about 3.5% of greenhouse gas emissions, roughly the same as the entire country of Japan, which is one of the world’s highest emitters.

Proponents of SAF argue that the fuel could make flying much greener than it is currently. It’s just that scaling SAF production up is a gigantic challenge.

“What they’re doing is quite important, they’re just demonstrating that the flight is perfectly safe, there are no problems with the fuel,” says David Lee, a professor of atmospheric science at Manchester Metropolitan University, who studies the impact of aviation on the climate, and who was a co-author of the paper that investigated the feasibility of transitioning to SAF. By switching to SAF over fossil fuels, you can achieve carbon savings of around 70%, says Lee, though this depends on the specific source of biomass you choose.

Lee notes that international regulations don’t actually allow for flights using more than 50% SAF as fuel at the moment, so Virgin Atlantic’s hop across the pond required a special permit from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority.

It all adds up to a successful proof-of-concept. But it would be difficult to power more than one glitzy flight with 100% SAF today. “You just can’t get hold of the damn stuff,” says Lee. “If we want to do engine tests, we have difficulty purchasing the fuel.”

It’s an issue that Virgin Atlantic itself acknowledges. SAF accounts for just 0.1% of all aviation fuels consumed. The International Air Transport Association predicts that the airline industry will require 450 billion litres of SAF by 2050 – only 300 million litres were produced in 2022. However, to date, SAF has helped to fuel hundreds of thousands of flights – at least as part of a blend with fossil fuels. In the US, SAF production is estimated to reach 2.1 billion gallons (7.9 billion litres) annually by 2030 – well below President Biden’s target of producing 3 billion gallons (11.3 billion litres) of the fuel annually by that year.

Ramping up SAF production is difficult. In a Royal Society report published earlier this year, Lee and colleagues analysed the UK’s potential to produce its own SAF for commercial flights. “We concluded that there wasn’t really enough land,” he says. Around the world, competition for land is fierce. We will need an additional 70-80 million hectares of cropland by 2030 globally, estimates management consultants McKinsey & Company – that’s an area bigger than the state of Texas. The vast majority of this new cropland (70% ) is needed to grow crops for feeding livestock. Only 10% of the total area required would go towards biofuel production in McKinsey’s scenario.

Some SAF comes from waste fats, for example, from food production processes. Relying on such sources could, in theory, lessen the need for expanding crop cultivation just to make biofuels. But there’s far too little waste available, says Hannah Daly at University College Cork, in Ireland. Even if you gathered up all the biomass waste available in the Republic of Ireland, she says, it would only allow you to replace about 4% of fossil fuels consumed by the country. The calculation would be similar in other countries, she suggests.

“There’s substantial risk that that ‘waste cooking oil’ could be fraudulently relabelled virgin palm oil,” says Daly. “That could be contributing to deforestation.”

Some alternatives to SAF, including hydrogen fuel and electrification, are not currently viable options for large commercial flights.

Chelsea Baldino, senior researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation and her colleagues have calculated that SAF made from waste sources in the UK would only be able to meet a maximum of 15% of UK jet fuel demand in 2030. The ICCT also estimates that just 3.3-4.2 billion gallons of SAF could feasibly be produced domestically in the US by 2030, while in 2019, US airlines used 23 billion gallons of jet fuel.

“Biofuels providing the significant greenhouse gas savings needed to decarbonise jet fuel will not be available at scale,” she says. E-fuels – synthetic versions of fossil fuels made using renewable energy – will be “essential”, according to Baldino. E-fuels require a lot of energy to produce but they have the advantage of not introducing additional carbon into the atmosphere, as would be the case with newly extracted fossil fuels.

Josh Moos, an economist at Leeds Beckett University in the UK, lambasts Virgin Atlantic’s 100% SAF flight as “greenwashing”.

“The science would suggest that there really is no such thing as sustainable aviation,” he says. It would be better to reduce demand for flights globally, perhaps by placing a levy on frequent flyers or by increasing taxes on the airline industry, he argues. Moos acknowledges that such measures are “politically and socially unpalatable”, though both he and Daly suggest they might be necessary if we are to meet net zero goals.

A spokeswoman for Virgin Atlantic says, “We are committed to achieving Net Zero 2050 and have set interim targets on our pathway to get there, including 10% Sustainable Aviation Fuel by 2030.”

She notes that the 100% SAF flight from London to New York relied entirely on waste biomass and that the demonstration was “an important step, but not the end goal” in the firm’s efforts to scale up its use of SAF in the coming years.

Some sceptics remain unconvinced. Daly, for one, points out that even if SAF does replace an increasing proportion of fossil fuels for aviation purposes, the overall benefit could be wiped out by the rapidly growing airline industry. Eurocontrol, a European air safety organisation, predicts that the annual total number of flights worldwide will reach 16 million by 2050 – an increase of 44% on 2019’s figure.

“I would love guilt-free flying myself – but it’s just not possible,” says Daly.

Source BBC

Fighting food waste: New system uses wireless signals in the sub-terahertz band to determine fruit ripeness

Posted on October 5, 2023October 5, 2023 by dishanth

One bad apple may not spoil the whole bunch, but when it comes to distributing food, a lot of good goes out with the bad.

Now, researchers from Princeton University and Microsoft Research have developed a fast and accurate way to determine fruit quality, piece by piece, using high-frequency wireless technology. The new tool gives suppliers a way to sort fruit based on fine-grained ripeness measurements. It promises to help cut food waste by optimizing distribution: good fruit picked from bad bunches, ripe fruit moved to the front of the line.

Current methods to determine ripeness are either unreliable, overly broad, too time-consuming or too expensive to implement at large scales, according to the new study, presented Oct. 3 at the 2023 ACM MobiCom conference on networking and mobile computing.

“There is no systematic way of determining the ripeness status of fruits and vegetables,” said Yasaman Ghasempour, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Princeton and one of the study’s principal investigators. “It is mostly random visual inspection, where you check one fruit out of the box on distribution lines and estimate its quality through physical contact or color change.”

But this kind of visual inspection leads to poor estimates much of the time, she said. Rather than rely on how the peel looks or how it feels to the touch, advanced wireless signals can effectively peek under the surface of a piece of fruit and reveal richer information about its quality.

Roughly one-third of all food produced in the United States gets tossed each year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Worldwide, the United Nations has estimated that half of all fruits and vegetables go to waste. The new study’s authors say inefficiency at this scale is only seen in the food industry, and that automated, noninvasive and scalable technologies can play a role in reducing all that waste.

“When we look at the global challenges around food security, nutrition and environmental sustainability, the issue of food waste plays a major role,” said Ranveer Chandra, the Managing Director of Research for Industry and CTO of Agri-Food at Microsoft. He said the amount of food wasted each year could feed more than a billion people. And that food waste accounts for nearly 6% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. “If we could reduce food waste, it would help feed the population, reduce malnutrition, and help mitigate the impact of climate change,” Chandra said.

The team, led by Ghasempour and Chandra, developed a system for determining ripeness using wireless signals in the sub-terahertz band that can scan fruit on a conveyor belt. The sub-terahertz signals—between microwave and infrared—interact with the fruit in ways that can be measured in fine detail, leading to readouts of sugar and dry matter content beneath the surface of the fruit’s skin.

Next-generation wireless systems, like the coming 6G standards, will be designed to accommodate new high-frequency bands such as terahertz and sub-terahertz signals, the researchers said. But while these bands have begun to spark new communication technologies, the Princeton-Microsoft technique is one of the first to leverage these signals for sensing, particularly for smart food sensing.

As fruit continues to ripen after harvest, its physical, chemical and electrical properties also change. Bananas yellow. Grapes wrinkle. Avocados darken. But for a lot of fruit, it is hard to know how those outward markers correlate to actual ripeness or quality. Anyone who has bitten into a perfectly shiny red apple only to find it mealy and dry understands this disparity.

When a sub-terahertz pulse impinges on a piece of fruit, its rays go more than skin deep. Some frequencies get absorbed, others get reflected, and a lot of frequencies do a little of both with varying intensity. The reflection creates its own signal across a range of frequencies, and that signal has a detailed and specific shape—a signature. By modeling the physics of these interactions and procuring a lot of data, the researchers were able to use that signature to reveal the fruit’s ripeness status.

“It was really challenging to develop a model for this,” Ghasempour said. She said fruits’ many structural layers—seeds, pulp, skin—added complexity to the problem, as well as variations in size, thickness, orientation and texture. “So, we performed some wave modeling and simulations, and then augmented those insights with the data that we collected.”

In the experiment, they used persimmons, avocados and apples. Fruits with smooth skins are easiest to measure. The bumpiness of, say, an avocado reflects a weaker signal and produces unwanted effects. But the researchers found ways to get around the bumpiness problem and say that with enough data the method can be applied to most fruits.

They believe this tool can be extended to other kinds of foods, too—including meats and beverages—by using different kinds of physiological markers. Those extended use cases could have big implications for food safety monitoring and consumer choice.

Source Tech Xplore

Recyclable Phone Batteries Are Now A Reality

Posted on August 31, 2023 by dishanth

Waste is Becoming an Increasingly Important Issue

The disposal of trash and waste is unsurprisingly a mess worldwide. Many problems exist within the structure of trash disposal, with recycling being often neglected in many areas, inconsistent and underdeveloped trash removal infrastructure, and the lack of any trash disposal facilities.

This means it’s relatively common worldwide to see actual rivers of trash.

A component of this issue that is growing daily is the increasing problem of electronic waste, otherwise known as e-waste. E-waste is the garbage created after electronic devices are thrown away after being used.

E-waste makes up anything electronic that goes into the landfill, and the reason this is so problematic because these devices often contain hazardous and toxic chemicals that eventually make their way into our land, water, and atmosphere.

Of the e-waste that is created, 10% of it is made up of cell phone batteries. This specific component of cell phones is increasingly a problem. Beyond the issues I described above, cell phones and other electronics are burned, releasing these dangerous chemicals and creating new ones.

However, many of these issues could be circumvented just by making easily recyclable phone batteries. This is how it could work.

Why Hasn’t This Been Done Already?

One of the major obstacles preventing cellphone batteries from being recycled commonly is that lithium-ion batteries are quite challenging to recycle or reuse.

However, there are many other ways to create cellphone batteries, and one of these ways could present itself as the way forward to create sustainable personal cellular devices.

The RMIT School of Engineering in Australia developed this new recyclable phone battery. The design primarily uses a material called Mxene, a material similar to graphene commonly used in electronics like traditional, not-so-recyclable phone batteries. The primary reason why Mxene isn’t already found in most cell phones is that it rusts easily, which hampers conductivity.

Compared to graphene or lithium-ion batteries, Mxene rusts much quicker, but this property ironically could be the very thing that extends the device’s life. Using sound waves to “brush” off the rust, the researchers estimate that they can extend a conventional phone battery’s life span by three times and create truly recyclable phone batteries.

Hossein Alijani, a Ph.D. student at the university and co-lead researcher of the project, said, “Current methods used to reduce oxidation rely on the chemical coating of the material, which limits the use of the MXene in its native form, in this work, we show that exposing an oxidized MXene film to high-frequency vibrations for just a minute removes the rust on the film. This simple procedure allows its electrical and electrochemical performance to be recovered.”

The Future is in Recycling

Reducing waste, period. It is one of the most critical issues facing us. However, in the meantime recycling the waste we are creating is the best solution to the massive amounts of garbage contaminating our planet.

As we continue to move into a world in which electronics play an increasingly important role in our daily lives, we must abandon the disposable electronic-use model. Creating easily removable and recyclable phone batteries is a challenge that is necessary for us to overcome.

With developments in technology like this becoming more common, we will soon see a world without contradiction between electronics and environmental sensitivity. As part of this movement, MXene recyclable phone batteries appear to be the latest and most promising solution to this problem that we have created.

Source Happy Eco News

Cellulosic Ethanol for Indonesian Farmers

Posted on June 16, 2023 by dishanth

Cellulosic Ethanol vs Bio-diesel

Like many other countries worldwide, Indonesia has ambitious goals for reducing reliance on fossil fuels. With a population just shy of 300 million people, the results of reducing petroleum consumption would be substantial.

Leaders within the country have expressed interest and intent to reduce reliance on fossil fuels; last year, the country’s president Joko Widodo announced that they are dedicating 700,000 hectares of land to cultivating renewable-based sugar ethanol.

However, small farmers have not seen the benefit of this transition toward bio-diesel production. Large palm oil firms dominate the industry, leaving small farmers without much hope in a transition that will benefit them as much as the environment.

According to Tenny Kristiana of the International Council on Clean Transportation, cellulosic ethanol could be the key ingredient to facilitate a boon in the lives of small farmers and Indonesia as a whole in the long run.

What could be done?

Cellulosic bio-ethanol is a bio-fuel that could be incredibly useful for Indonesian farmers due to its nature in the supply chain. The ethanol is created using traditionally considered waste products, like palm husks, trunks, and empty fruit bunches. These leftovers are either left to rot in the fields or sold overseas to countries like Japan, using the byproducts to fuel their own bio-ethanol industry.

Small farmers would benefit from selling these raw materials to bio-ethanol companies in Indonesia under long-term contracts guaranteeing the benefits for a long time. Expanding this domestic industry would also create jobs in transportation, manufacturing, and plantation work.

Indonesia specifically has large potential in developing its cellulosic ethanol industry, with estimates ranging up to 2 million kiloliters from palm residues alone. This could be the major push that Indonesia needs to support its domestic supply chain and create long-term stability in the job market that they need.

Read also about myECO, An Electric Saving Startup Based in Indonesia.

Being Done Elsewhere Too

This push towards sustainable development in cellulosic ethanol production is not without precedent. Brazil has one of the most successful bio-ethanol programs in the world, making up 50% of all fuel consumption in the gasoline market by April 2008.

This push would also reduce reliance on trade with foreign countries, as the fuel supply would be provided domestically, leaving Indonesia less vulnerable to changes outside its borders.

As the industry expands, they could also expand the inputs in ethanol production. Sugar cane bagasse, corn stalks, rice stems, and others could be used to create bioethanol.

While the long-term goal for many countries is to decarbonize and get off of ICEs entirely, in other countries, the costs outweigh the benefits. In the short to medium term, domestic bioethanol production could be necessary to help small farmers and the Indonesian society at large to buy into the green transition.

Source Happy Eco News

Self-healing concrete and plastic-eating insects: The best green innovations of February 2023

Posted on March 2, 2023March 2, 2023 by dishanth

It’s nearly time for edie 23, edie’s biggest face-to-face event of the year. And during the event, which will take place on March 1-2, Springwise Chair, James Bidwell, will host a session with Google Head of Sustainability, Adam Elman on how artificial intelligence (AI) can accelerate corporate climate action.

Inspired by this, our first two innovations this month are leveraging AI to improve sustainability – in surprising ways. We’ve probably all heard about ChatGPT. But now, one startup is leveraging the technology that powers it to develop a text-based system for managing restaurant inventories – reducing food waste in the process. And AI is also being used to grow edible insects as an alternative to more environmentally damaging protein sources.

There has certainly been a buzz around insect-based technology this month, as creepy crawlies also feature in our third innovation – this time a plastic-eating variety of waxworm that can tackle plastic pollution while providing fishmeal for farmed salmon.

Elsewhere, we have spotted two kitchen-based devices that are helping people to deliver sustainability at home. The first lets users make their own climate-friendly plant milk in minutes at the touch of a button. The second, is a home bin that stops the nutrients found in food scraps from going to waste by converting discarded food into farm feed.

And finally, it has long been known that the Ancient Romans were exceptionally good at making long-lasting concrete. But their secrets have long been lost – until now. Today, a team of researchers is hoping to commercialize a Roman-inspired self-healing concrete mix.

AI-powered restaurant management

Poring over data at the end of a long working day is likely the last thing anybody in the restaurant industry is keen to do. But, with technology increasingly becoming integral to a successful business, this tedious work is essential. Making it easier is Pennsylvania-based ClearCOGS, which has partnered up with ChatGPT to create a system that allows restaurants to access insights about their inventory and operations quickly and easily.

ChatGPT has gained significant attention as a language-based AI because it can analyse data, provide insights, and make human-like recommendations in real-time. Pairing this new technology with ClearCOGS’ Predictive Forecasting System creates a place for restaurant operators to ask questions 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and receive data-driven answers.

Using a simple text-based query, restaurant operators can get fast answers to questions like, “what are my top selling items this week?” or “I have five kilogrammes of beef in inventory; how likely is it that I’m going to run out today?” With the power of GPT-3, the latest natural language processing technology, the AI system can also understand and respond to complex questions, allowing operators to make efficient and informed decisions about their inventory, while discovering ways to improve. This can help reduce waste.

Digital technologies to make insect farming more efficient

Experts are becoming increasingly concerned about how the world’s growing population will be fed in an equitable and sustainable way.

One solution is edible insects – both for human consumption and as animal feed. This, it is hoped, will help free up land and resources, as insects require far less space and fewer resources to farm than other protein sources such as beef or chicken. But producing them en masse has so far proved challenging. Tech company Entocycle is turning to AI to help.

The London-based startup uses smart technology to help insect farms work efficiently and sustainably (and manage billions of insects at any one time). Its technology helps farms improve accuracy and efficiency while reducing manual intervention. It does this by, for example, measuring populations in a farm to automate food requirements and controlling the temperature to optimise insect health.

The company focuses on black soldier fly farms, an insect that grows very rapidly and can survive on food waste. These insects are nutrient-rich, including more zinc and iron than lean meat, and more calcium than milk per gram.

Feeding fish with plastic-eating insects

Seafood is one of the most highly traded commodities in the global food system, and in 2018, for the first time in history, global farmed fish production surpassed that of beef production. And experts expect demand for aquatic foods to double by 2050. How to sustainably farm fish to meet such high levels of global demand is a pressing concern for the aquaculture industry.

Part of that concern lies in finding the best solution to the challenge of what to feed farmed fish. Many growers seek circular solutions that minimise waste at all stages of the production process, including Glasgow-based researchers who recently discovered a surprising option for fishmeal. The team found that waxworms fed on plastic appeared more digestible to salmon than those fed on a regular diet.

Set up by Dr. Martin Llewellyn at the University of Glasgow, SalmoSim is an in-vitro Atlantic Salmon gut simulator that helps those in the aquaculture industry test out new medicines or feedstock for farmed fish. The team provides tailored experiments that analyse the absorption of sugars, volatile fatty acids, amino acids, and more throughout a salmon’s digestive process. And it was in one of these experiments that plastic-fed waxworms were found to be a highly digestible feed.

By reducing demand for marine-grown fish meal, plastic-fed waxworms could provide a dual purpose – reducing plastic waste while feeding the high volumes of fish demanded by a growing global market. The research team’s next steps include assessing the healthfulness of the salmon fed on the waxworms for human consumption.

A countertop device for making plant-based milks at home

Non-dairy milks have a lower environmental impact than dairy equivalents and are fairly easy to make at home, requiring a nut or seed, water, and a blender. But despite this, many of us just don’t have the time, inclination, or ingredients to make plant-based milks by hand.

Step in GROW UP, a sleek, countertop brewer designed to produce fresh, non-dairy milk within minutes. Users choose from a range of up to 10 different ingredients, including nuts, oats, coconuts, and hemp seeds. All it takes to make a glass of fresh milk is one cup of the chosen ingredient, plus water, added to the top of the brewer. With the push of a button, the device then makes fresh plant-based milk in less than six minutes.

Parts of the machine are dishwasher safe. GROW UP also does not use single-use packaging, and the machine includes a self-cleaning function. The brewing device is currently available for pre-order with a $50 deposit. It is scheduled to be shipped in spring 2023.

A bin that turns your home’s food waste into animal feed

Food waste is a growing problem around the world. When we waste food, many nutrients and resources are wasted with it. Moreover, when food ends up rotting in landfill, methane is released, which further contributes to global warming. Now, Mill Industries Inc has created a bin that conserves the nutrients from food waste and sends them back to farms where they can feed chickens and help protect the planet.

Every ‘member’ who subscribes to the food waste system receives a Mill kitchen bin that dries, shrinks, and de-stinks your kitchen waste overnight, turning it into nutrient-rich Food Grounds. Once the bin is full, members can schedule a pickup for the food grounds using the Mill app. The company turns the food grounds into a chicken feed ingredient.

Mill’s founder and chief executive Matt Rogers says the system “makes it easy to do the right thing”. He explains: “Food isn’t trash. But until today, it was hard to do anything except throw uneaten food in the garbage. The Mill Membership is a simple way to keep food out of landfills, send it back to farms, and make your kitchen smell awesome. Resources are increasingly scarce – wasting food at home is a solvable problem that we can tackle together.”

Mill is currently working through the necessary scientific and regulatory processes to turn the food grounds into a safe and nutritious chicken feed ingredient.

Longer-lasting, self-healing concrete

The ancient Romans were master builders. While many modern concrete structures have crumbled in just a few decades, many Roman structures are still standing, including the Pantheon, which has the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome and was completed in 128 CE. Roman concrete has been known to withstand earthquakes and harsh weather, and certain variations could even set underwater. Until now, exactly what made Roman concrete so durable has remained something of a mystery.

But now, a team of researchers from MIT, Harvard University, and laboratories in Italy and Switzerland, has discovered some of the ancient concrete-manufacturing strategies used by the Romans. They found that Roman concrete contains ‘lime clasts’ – tiny minerals originating from lime that give the concrete the ability to self-heal. Spectroscopic examination also suggested that the Romans used lime in its more reactive form – quicklime.

The researchers concluded that the process of incorporating quicklime, known as hot mixing, was key to the concrete’s durability. During hot mixing, the lime clasts develop a ‘nanoparticle architecture’. When cracked, this reacts with water to create a calcium-saturated solution, which then recrystallises as calcium carbonate and quickly fills the crack.

The team is now working to commercialize this formula. If successful, the more durable concrete could reduce the environmental impact of cement production, as concrete structures will not need to be replaced so quickly.

Source edie

Tesco pulls forward target to halve food waste

Posted on October 18, 2022October 18, 2022 by dishanth

Tesco has accelerated its plans for halving food waste in operations, bringing the commitment’s deadline forward from 2030 to 2025.

The supermarket first set the target five years ago, in alignment with target 12.3 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals’ (SDGs). It set a baseline year of the 2016/17 financial year.

By the end of the 2021/22 financial year, the business had delivered a 45% reduction in operational food waste against this baseline. Given that it was, therefore, on track to exceed the 2030 target, it has pulled the deadline forward to 2025.

Actions which Tesco has already taken to reduce food waste in its operations have included forging partnerships with FareShare and OLIO to divert surplus food to communities; diverting surplus food not fit for human consumption to suppliers that can use it for animal feed; stocking ‘wonky’ produce to help reduce waste on farms and allowing store staff to take home foods approaching their use-by dates for free.

Tesco has been reporting food waste data since 2013 and was the first UK supermarket to do so

Tesco has also moved this week to link executive pay to the delivery of the accelerated target. It had already linked a quarter of the Performance Share Plan awards Executive Directors receive to progress on other key environmental and social targets, including those on emissions and on gender and ethnicity representation. Now, food waste will be added.

Tesco Group’s chief executive Ken Murphy said he hopes that the changes will “drive further transformative change”.

He also called on other businesses to follow suit, and for policymaking to raise the bar across the UK’s grocery sector. Murphy said: “The work we and our suppliers do won’t tackle the issue alone. We have long called for Government to introduce mandatory food waste reporting to help measure and judge if real action is happening. Action must be taken across the whole industry.”

Tesco is notably working with Defra on its ‘Step Up To The Plate’ pledge, which helps businesses and individuals align with SDG 12.3 and provides a platform for Ministers to receive recommendations for targeted policy support.

The pledge requires corporate signatories to adopt WRAP’s food waste reduction roadmap. The framework, built in partnership with charity IGD, sets out how organisations can measure and act on wastage levels across a “farm-to-fork” approach.

But, as Murphy said, the business wants the UK Government to go further and mandate that supermarkets publicly publish their food waste data in a uniform fashion.

Source edie

Reduce food waste with processing and packaging solutions

Posted on October 4, 2022October 17, 2022 by dishanth

It’s not hard to make the case for why tackling food loss and food waste is important to sustainability. About one-third of food produced globally never gets consumed. And food waste accounts for about 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The food and beverage industry has a role to play by reducing food waste in companies’ operations, and by giving consumers products that are less likely to lead to waste. There is good reason (beyond sustainability) for the industry to pay attention — whether you’re a retailer, a manufacturer or a food brand — because consumers care about this issue. According to the Tetra Pak Index 2020, 77 percent of consumers say food waste is a concern, putting it on par with climate change.

Before we get to the role of industry, it’s important to understand the difference between food loss and food waste. Food loss is caused by inefficient growing, processing or preservation — in other words, food that fails to make its way to retail. A number of considerations in food manufacturing can reduce food loss. Increasing efficiencies can reduce product loss before food even leaves the factory, in addition to a number of other sustainability benefits.

Food waste occurs at the stages of distribution, retail and consumption by consumers. Because it’s driven by the short shelf life of food, we can ensure food is packaged to optimize shelf life. A variety of factors can protect and extend the life of the product.

Let’s take a closer look at these solutions.

Implementing a methodology like Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) will help improve the overall productivity of a plant, including mapping the sources of food loss and waste. Image courtesy of Tetra Pak.

Understanding where food loss happens in manufacturing

Once raw ingredients arrive at a plant for processing, there are many reasons those ingredients don’t make it out of the factory. The first step in tackling food loss at the factory is understanding where it is happening.

Modern automation systems, such as Tetra Pak PlantMaster, enable food and beverage manufacturers to track all product movements within their facilities. This data allows them to build a baseline to understand where and why food loss is happening, and where investments can be made for improvements.

Another way to understand and reduce food loss at the plant is by implementing a methodology such as Total Productive Maintenance (TPM). TPM is a holistic approach to working and equipment maintenance that aims to reduce stops and breakdowns. This method will not only help improve the overall productivity of a plant, but also help in mapping all the sources of waste and loss. For example, plant operators may find they are having a lot of starts and stops in the packaging process, which leads to liquid food loss. By implementing TPM, one food and beverage manufacturer was able to reduce its food loss by 3.6 million pounds.

Another pain point in processing with a significant amount of liquid food loss is the mix phase when the processing system switches from water to product and vice versa. This mix phase transition occurs between every batch, typically with numerous batches per day, per processing system. Recently at one of my customers’ sites, we implemented a solution that lessens the duration of the mix phase without compromising on product quality. This resulted in a 20.5-gallon reduction in product loss per transition, saving the company more than 24,500 gallons of product per system, per year. These savings can add up quickly.

Quality loss is another area to look at, and which would a focused improvement project under the TPM methodology would address. When manufacturers conduct internal quality sampling, they are de facto creating food loss. And some manufacturers are sampling up to 2 percent of their finished product. Once a sampling plan can be standardized, the sampling rate is reduced from 1 percent to 1.2 percent without compromising on quality or food safety.

Minimize food waste with packaging

Once food has escaped being lost during the production process, ample other opportunities can prevent it from becoming food waste. While food and beverage manufacturers don’t have much control over what logistics operators, retailers or consumers do, they can determine the packaging. The right packaging can extend shelf life and increase the odds of being consumed.

At the most basic level, good packaging must keep food safe to eat and free from bacteria or other contamination. A package is a physical barrier that keeps oxygen, water vapor and other particles out. Some packages protect from light, and others are used with processing techniques that extend shelf life.

A package should also protect the quality, integrity and taste of the product to ensure consumers don’t throw it out. Especially if your products contain functional, value-added ingredients, such as omega-3 fatty acids or vitamins, you need a package that will not compromise their effectiveness, bringing benefits to the consumer.

One final packaging consideration: Does it need to be chilled throughout the supply chain? Packages that require refrigeration are susceptible to spoiling if something goes awry during chilled transportation and storage to retail, or if consumers fail to get them into their fridge at home. However, a package that is shelf-stable will be perfectly fine unopened even if the power goes out. As an added bonus, a package that doesn’t require chilled transportation will cut down on transportation-related energy needs, while still maintaining the quality of the product and preventing food waste.

Having sound, thoughtful approaches to food processing and packaging is the entry point on the road to preventing food loss and waste. By optimizing processing, you’re ensuring more food makes it out the door and on its way to consumers. And by making smart packaging choices, you can ensure that products have a higher success rate of making it through the supply chain and being enjoyed by consumers.

Source GreenBiz

No trash goes to waste on Greek islands racing to recycle

Posted on September 7, 2022September 7, 2022 by dishanth

Before the tiny Greek island of Tilos became a big name in recycling, taverna owner Aristoteles Chatzifountas knew that whenever he threw his restaurant’s trash into a municipal bin down the street it would end up in the local landfill.

The garbage site had become a growing blight on the island of now 500 inhabitants, off Greece’s south coast, since ships started bringing over packaged goods from neighbouring islands in 1960.

Six decades later, in December last year, the island launched a major campaign to fix its pollution problem. Now it recycles up to 86 per cent of its rubbish, a record high in Greece, according to authorities, and the landfill is shut.

Chatzifountas said it took only a month to get used to separating his trash into three bins – one for organic matter; the other for paper, plastic, aluminium and glass; and the third for everything else.

“The closing of the landfill was the right solution,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “We need a permanent and more ecological answer.”

Tilos’ triumph over trash puts it ahead in an inter-island race of sorts, as Greece plays catch-up to meet stringent recycling goals set by the European Union (EU) and as institutions, companies and governments around the world adopt zero-waste policies in efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

“We know how to win races,” said Tilos’ deputy mayor Spyros Aliferis. “But it’s not a sprint. This is the first step (and) it’s not easy.”

The island’s performance contrasts with that of Greece at large. In 2019, the country recycled and composted only a fifth of its municipal waste, placing it 24th among 27 countries ranked by the EU’s statistics office.

That’s a far cry from EU targets to recycle or prepare for reuse 55 per cent of municipal waste by weight by 2025 and 65 per cent by 2035.

Greece has taken some steps against throwaway culture, such as making stores charge customers for single-use plastic bags.

Still, “we are quite backward when it comes to recycling and reusing here,” said Dimitrios Komilis, a professor of solid waste management at the Democritus University of Thrace, in northern Greece.

Recycling can lower planet-warming emissions by reducing the need to manufacture new products with raw materials, whose extraction is carbon-heavy, Komilis added.

Getting rid of landfills can also slow the release of methane, another potent greenhouse gas produced when organic materials like food and vegetation are buried in landfills and rot in low-oxygen conditions.

And green groups note that -waste schemes can generate more jobs than landfill disposal or incineration as collecting, sorting and recycling trash is more labour-intensive.

But reaching zero waste isn’t as simple as following Tilos’ lead – each region or city generates and handles rubbish differently, said researcher Dominik Noll, who works on sustainable island transitions at Vienna’s Institute of Social Ecology.

“Technical solutions can be up-scaled, but socioeconomic and sociocultural contexts are always different,” he said.

“Every project or programme needs to pay attention to these contexts in order to implement solutions for waste reduction and treatment.”

High-value trash

Tilos has built a reputation as a testing ground for Greece’s green ambitions, becoming the first Greek island to ban hunting in 1993 and, in 2018, becoming one of the first islands in the Mediterranean to run mainly on wind and solar power.

For its “Just Go Zero” project, the island teamed up with Polygreen, a Piraeus-based network of companies promoting a circular economy, which aims to design waste and pollution out of supply chains.

Several times a week, Polygreen sends a dozen or so local workers door-to-door collecting household and business waste, which they then sort manually.

Antonis Mavropoulos, a consultant who designed Polygreen’s operation, said the “secret” to successful recycling is to maximise the waste’s market value.

“The more you separate, the more valuable the materials are,” he said, explaining that waste collected in Tilos is sold to recycling companies in Athens.

On a June morning, workers bustled around the floor of Polygreen’s recycling facility, perched next to the defunct landfill in Tilos’ arid mountains.

They swiftly separated a colourful assortment of garbage into 25 streams – from used vegetable oil, destined to become biodiesel, to cigarette butts, which are taken apart to be composted or turned into materials like sound insulation.

Organic waste is composted. But some trash, like medical masks or used napkins, cannot be recycled, so Polygreen shreds it, to be turned into solid recovered fuel for the cement industry on the mainland.

More than 100 tonnes of municipal solid waste – the equivalent weight of nearly 15 large African elephants – have been sorted so far, said project manager Daphne Mantziou.

Setting up the project cost less than 250,000 euros ($255,850) – and, according to Polygreen figures, running it does not exceed the combined cost of a regular municipal waste-management operation and the new tax of 20 euros per tonne of landfilled waste that Greece introduced in January.

More than ten Greek municipalities and some small countries have expressed interest in duplicating the project, said company spokesperson Elli Panagiotopoulou, who declined to give details.

No time to waste

Replicating Tilos’ success on a larger scale could prove tricky, said Noll, the sustainability researcher.

Big cities may have the money and infrastructure to efficiently handle their waste, but enlisting key officials and millions of households is a tougher undertaking, he said.

“It’s simply easier to engage with people on a more personal level in a smaller-sized municipality,” said Noll.

When the island of Paros, about 200 km (124 miles) northwest of Tilos, decided to clean up its act, it took on a city-sized challenge, said Zana Kontomanoli, who leads the Clean Blue Paros initiative run by Common Seas, a UK-based social enterprise.

The island’s population of about 12,000 swells during the tourist season when hundreds of thousands of visitors drive a 5,000 per cent spike in waste, including 4.5 million plastic bottles annually, said Kontomanoli.

In response, Common Seas launched an island-wide campaign in 2019 to curb the consumption of bottled water, one of a number of its anti-plastic pollution projects.

Using street banners and on-screen messages on ferries, the idea was to dispel the common but mistaken belief that the local water is non-potable.

The share of visitors who think they can’t drink the island’s tap water has since dropped from 100 per cent to 33 per cent, said Kontomanoli.

“If we can avoid those plastic bottles coming to the island altogether, we feel it’s a better solution” than recycling them, she said.

Another anti-waste group thinking big is the nonprofit DAFNI Network of Sustainable Greek Islands, which has been sending workers in electric vehicles to collect trash for recycling and reuse on Kythnos island since last summer.

Project manager Despina Bakogianni said this was once billed as “the largest technological innovation project ever implemented on a Greek island” – but the race to zero waste is now heating up, and already there are more ambitious plans in the works.

Those include CircularGreece, a new 16-million-euro initiative DAFNI joined along with five Greek islands and several mainland areas, such as Athens, all aiming to reuse and recycle more and boost renewable energy use.

“That will be the biggest circular economy project in Greece,” said Bakogianni.

Source Eco-Business

Has KFC found the secret sauce to circular packaging?

Posted on July 11, 2022 by dishanth

Fast food restaurants are big waste generators. However, the lack of viable sustainable alternatives to single-use plastic and the industry’s emphasis on cost and convenience means cheap, disposable foodware will be on their menus for some time yet.

Fast food chain KFC and Singapore-based sustainable foodware company TRIA are looking to disrupt the fast-food packaging industry with what they call the “world’s first” closed-loop single-use packaging pilot project.

In a six-month trial, one KFC restaurant in Singapore will switch its non-recyclable boxes, cups, and cutlery to those made from NEUTRIA, a rapidly degrading plant-based polyester developed by TRIA. The used packaging will be collected by TRIA and fed into their patented Bio24 digester, which turns it into compost within 24 hours.

Conventional plastic recycling faces many challenges in Singapore. Even if the food packaging is technically recyclable, segregating and cleaning it could potentially cost five times more than producing new packaging from scratch. Furthermore, most of the country’s plastic is incinerated. With little incentive to recycle or reduce plastic consumption, plastic waste is only expected to increase. Since 2017, plastic recycling rates have remained extremely low, usually hovering around 4 – 6 percent.

TRIA’s patented Bio24 digester, which can turn NEUTRIA packaging and food waste into compost within 24 hours. Image: Eco-Business

TRIA claims its product can remain relatively cost-competitive without compromising on sustainability. However, apart from ensuring the product’s economic viability, TRIA’s chief executive Ng Pei Kang says that sustainable foodware companies must give higher priority to their F&B partner’s operational needs if they are to make such packaging more widely accepted.

“I think it’s great that we are experimenting with [sustainable foodware like reusable cups], but we also need to empathise more with the food brands. How can KFC extend this to the 20,000 outlets they own without changing their operations? [With our model], they don’t need to hire more people or get new trash bins. If it’s not business as usual, it would be very tough [for restaurants to accept these new packaging products].” Ng said in an interview with Eco-Business.

During the pilot launch event at Shanaya Environmental Services on 21 June, KFC revealed that cost-competitiveness, design flexibility and operational resilience were some of the main factors which attracted them to TRIA’s product.

“Since 2017, we’ve been looking for new ways to reduce our use of non-recyclable packaging. We’ve previously considered edible spoons, but they could not meet our cost or operational requirements. However, TRIA was open to extensive redesigns and testing to ensure their product could withstand our daily operating needs and be collected and processed at an acceptable price point,” said Lynette Lim, general manager of KFC in an interview with Eco-Business.

The mashed potato/coleslaw cup, cutlery, pockets and mat made of NEUTRIA by TRIA for their 6-month pilot with KFC. Image: Eco-Business

Redesigning KFC’s mashed potato and coleslaw cup was particularly difficult for TRIA’s designers. Using the company’s plant-based material, the cup had to maintain its structural integrity when stacked, in addition to being heat and moisture-resistant. While it has yet to be tested in-store conditions, Lim cited this as an example of TRIA’s commitment to KFC’s operational standards.

For every tonne of NEUTRIA and food waste fed into the digester, TRIA claims that 200 – 300kg of compost can be produced. While the company has not yet secured an offtake agreement for its compost, it has signed memorandum of understandings (MOUs) with local rooftop farming company Comcrop, and Norwegian chemical and fertiliser company Yara International. Ng also highlighted how TRIA’s products and services can help these companies achieve their own business goals in a more profitable and sustainable way.

“Yara is looking to expand their regional presence here, and I think they are interested in our product because it could be a low-carbon source of fertiliser. In Europe, they have access to hydroponic power, which allows them to profitably produce low-carbon, green fertiliser. However, shipping this fertiliser to Asia is not realistic. That’s where we come in,” Ng explained.

Finished bags of compost made from NEUTRIA packaging and food waste. Image: Eco-Business.

In an upcoming bio-valorisation pilot, Yara hopes to produce bio-equivalent fertiliser from TRIA’s compost. Upon receiving TRIA’s product, Yara could theoretically adjust its nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus content to ensure that it is nutritionally equivalent to commercial fertilisers. Other than reducing costs, the closed-loop system allows the fertiliser to be traced, therefore building greater confidence in prospective buyers.

However, TRIA’s technology is not without drawbacks. The composting system hinges on TRIA’s ability to take ownership of and reprocess its post-consumer waste. Singapore is planning to introduce an extended producer responsibility (EPR) law for packaging by 2025, which could reduce public expenditure and the amount of waste sent to landfills. Nevertheless, Professor Seeram Ramakrishna, a mechanical engineering professor and chair of the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Circular Economy Taskforce pointed out that achieving EPR has its difficulties.

What is extended producer responsibility (EPR)?
EPR is a policy approach where producers are given significant financial and/or physical responsibility for the treatment and disposal of post-consumer products.

“For EPR to work effectively, the presence of good waste management systems must be in place, including infrastructure to reprocess the waste. There should be a high level of compliance and enforcement,” explained Ramakrishna.

While Ng is confident TRIA can handle KFC’s in-store waste, he admitted that a system for managing takeaway waste remains elusive for now.

“Takeaway waste will still be sent to the public waste management system. However, the majority of packaging is used for dine-in purposes, and that’s where we are able to help,” Ng said.

In a previous interview with Eco-Business, Ng also professed that sourcing top talent for the sustainable food packaging industry remains a challenge. Furthermore, the hygiene and economic concerns of the pandemic have slowed the appetite for innovative new technologies like TRIA’s, he said. However, he stated that a partnership with one of the world’s most recognisable brands was an important step towards a circular packaging economy.

Source Eco Business