Feeding people in need was the main aim of Northland Food Rescue/Whakaora Kai Taitokerau when the organisation was first seeded in Whangārei in 2016.
But the benefits to the environment – by removing methane-producing food from landfills – quickly became obvious, community development worker Carol Peters said.
The organisation now receives food, which would normally go to landfill, from 35 suppliers, including supermarkets, cafes, growers and packhouses across most of Tai Tokerau.
Northland Food Rescue manager Peter Nicholas says Northland Food Rescue/Whakaora Kai Taitokerau is successful because it both feeds the hungry and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by saving food from landfill. DAVID WHITE / STUFF
The food is all weighed, so reductions in greenhouse gas emissions can be calculated.
It is then sorted and listed on a secure online “shop” so distributors – including churches, schools and food banks – can select which kai their clients need.
The scale of the operation means in the last year alone it saved 108 tonnes of food from going to waste, creating 305,000 meals and reducing 121 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.
Manager Peter Nicholas said 97 per cent of the donated food is perfectly edible, it just can’t be sold because of imperfections or expiry dates.
“It is a fault of our food supply system; it is usually perfectly edible food that can be distributed to people in need.
Northland Food Rescue has an online “shop” so distributors can select their food. David White / STUFF
“When there is food insecurity in this country, it makes no sense to be chucking food out.”
Food not fit for human consumption is fed to pigs or composted.
But most of the time, the food can be used with a bit of know-how, such as using fruit past its best in baking, Nicholas said.
Northland Food Rescue is run by 155 Whare Āwhina Community Houses, and its distributors include the organisation’s food bank and centre for homeless people, Open Arms.
Peter Nicholas says Northland Food Rescue has created 305,000 meals out of donated food in the past year, reducing 121 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. David White / STUFF
Another charity which benefits is Soul Food, which makes hot meals for the homeless and hungry once a week, as well as distributing food parcels.
Co-founder Chris Youens said Northland Food Rescue supplied quite a lot of Soul Food’s needs, especially the fresh produce important for a healthy diet.
“We get all sorts of produce through them which helps us make our meals on Monday nights,” he said.
Northland Food Rescue was about to move to a bigger warehouse in Whangārei and was trying to encourage more suppliers to donate unwanted food, Nicholas said.
“There is a lot more that could be rescued. Even after all these years of operating, it is still just the tip of the iceberg.”
Peters believed more produce could be rescued if people volunteered to help pick food or pick up tree fall.
It would help if New Zealand introduced a law to stop the likes of supermarkets from throwing waste food to landfill, as France did in 2016, she said.
But the organisation was also looking at a sweetener for suppliers: Investigating if carbon credits could be given to suppliers for their reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, Peters said.
A pale yellow liquid flows into plastic barrels – wastewater from a nearby tofu factory that a Singapore-based startup is turning into sustainable wine.
SinFooTech, focusing on recycling waste by-products in the food industry, produces about 1,000 to 2,000 liters of soy wine a month from its small distillery at the western edge of Singapore.
The waste is collected and taken to a nearby distillery where brewers add yeast and sugar. The mixture is then put into a tank to ferment for anywhere between two to six weeks.
Brewers must make the wine within a few hours of collecting the soy whey, as the liquid spoils quickly.
The drink, named Sachi, has a 5.8 percent alcohol content and is similar to cider or dessert wine. But, those who have tasted the beverage billed as the first made from soy whey, say it’s a whole other experience.
“If people expect wine from this, it’s not what they’re going to get,” says Dannon Har, a writer for Spill Magazine.
“I think it’s something that’s of its own and people should drink it thinking that way.”
How is Singapore leading the way in food sustainability?
Singapore has become a hub for the development of innovative future foods. Start-ups are producing goods ranging from lab-grown “seafood” to dumplings made with tropical fruit instead of pork.
Currently, a 500-millilitre bottle of soy wine sells for 26 euros. SinFooTech is also developing an aged whiskey-like spirit and plans to scale up production through workforce automation.
Watch the video above to see how soy wine is made from tofu wastewater.
California will soon enact the largest mandatory residential food waste recycling program in the US in January, an effort designed to dramatically cut down on organic waste in landfills and reduce the state’s methane emissions.
When food scraps such as banana peels and leftover veggies and other organic materials break down they emit methane, a greenhouse gas more potent and damaging in the short-term than carbon emissions from fossil fuels. Organic material such as food and yard waste makes up a fifth of the state’s methane emissions and half of everything in California landfills, according to CalRecycle.
California plans to start converting food waste into compost or energy in order to avoid these emissions, becoming the second state to do so after Vermont launched a similar program last year.
“This is the biggest change to trash since recycling started in the 1980s,” said Rachel Wagoner, the director of the California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery.
Most California residents will be required to toss excess food into green waste bins rather than the trash. Municipalities will then turn the food waste into compost or use it to create biogas, an energy source that is similar to natural gas.
A truck unloads organic waste to be used for composting at a facility in Woodland, California. Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli/AP
Recycling food waste “is the single easiest and fastest thing that every single person can do to affect climate change”, Wagoner said.
The effort reflects growing recognition about the role food waste plays in damaging the environment. Up to 40% of food in the US is wasted, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
A handful of states and countries, including France, have passed laws requiring grocery stores and other large businesses to recycle or donate excess food to charities, but California’s program targets households and businesses. In 2016, California passed a law aimed at reducing methane emissions by significantly cutting down on discarded food.
Starting in January, all cities and counties that provide trash services are supposed to have food recycling programs in place and grocery stores must donate edible food that otherwise would be thrown away to food banks or similar organizations.
“There’s just no reason to stick this material in a landfill, it just happens to be cheap and easy to do so,” said Ned Spang, faculty lead for the Food Loss and Waste Collaborative at the University of California, Davis.
Vermont, home to 625,000 people compared with California’s nearly 40 million, is the only other state that bans residents from throwing their food waste in the trash. Under a law that took effect in July 2020, residents can compost the waste in their yards, opt for curbside pick up or drop it at waste stations. Seattle and San Francisco have similar programs.
Students discard their uneaten lunch into a food waste can at an elementary school in Connecticut. Photograph: Dave Zajac/AP
Under California’s new law, the state must cut organic waste in landfills by 75% from 2014 levels by 2025, or from about 23m tons to 5.7m tons.
Most local governments will allow homeowners and apartment dwellers to dump excess food into yard waste bins, with some providing countertop containers to hold the scraps for a few days before taking it outside. Some areas can get exemptions for parts of the law, such as rural locations where bears rummage through trash cans.
The food waste will go to facilities for composting or for turning it into energy through anaerobic digestion, a process that creates biogas that can be used like natural gas for heating and electricity.
But only a fifth of California’s composting facilities may accept food waste, and they face a strict permitting process to take food waste alongside traditional green waste such as leaves.
The state also set a 2025 goal of diverting 20% of food that would otherwise go to landfills to feed people in need. Supermarkets must start donating their excess food in January and hotels, restaurants, hospitals, schools and large event venues will start doing so in 2024. The donation part of the law will contribute toward a federal goal of cutting food waste in half by 2030.
Davis, California, already has a mandatory food recycling program. Joy Klineberg puts coffee grounds, fruit rinds and cooking scraps into a metal bin labeled “compost” on her countertop. When preparing dinners, she empties excess food from the cutting board into the bin.
Every few days, she dumps the contents into her green waste bin outside, which is picked up and sent to a county facility. Unpleasant countertop bin smells haven’t been a problem, she said.
Joy Klineberg lives in Davis, California, where residents are already required to recycle their food waste. Photograph: Rich Pedroncelli/AP
“All you’re changing is where you’re throwing things, it’s just another bin,” she said. “It’s really easy, and it’s amazing how much less trash you have.”
Implementing similar programs in bigger cities is more challenging.
Los Angeles and San Diego, the state’s two most populous cities, which together account for about one of every eight Californians, are among those that won’t have their programs ready for all households next month.
That’s because it takes time to buy the necessary equipment, such as green waste bins for households that don’t already have them for yard waste and to set up facilities to take the material. Trash collection fees will go up in many places.
CalRecycle also wants to focus more on education and less on punishment. Governments can avoid penalties by self-reporting to the state by March if they don’t have programs in place and outlining plans for starting them. Cities that refuse to comply could eventually be fined up to $10,000 a day.
Ken Prue, the deputy director of San Diego’s environmental services department, said the city put nearly $9m in this year’s budget to buy more waste bins, countertop containers and trucks to haul the additional waste.
Prue hopes San Diego residents will quickly realize the importance of recycling food waste after the program starts next summer.
“Hopefully before they know it, it becomes second nature,” he said.
When people think about ways to help the environment, encourage biodiversity and decrease greenhouse gases, they don’t usually think about the impact of food waste. And yet food waste is responsible for up to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Producing food for a growing global population is a complex challenge with a lot of negative environmental consequences, so food waste creates unnecessary strain on our fragile environment.
I was part of a recent research project with the UK Global Food Security programme, which explores ways to cut food waste. Our key findings and suggestions address waste throughout the food system – that includes all the processes, people and infrastructure involved in getting food from farm to fork. We found that cutting food waste needs cooperative action from all of us – businesses, policymakers and individuals. The most commonly wasted foods are fresh fruit and vegetables, bread and baked goods, and leftovers. Products with short shelf lives, such as meat and dairy, are also prone to be wasted.
Domestic food waste declined in the UK dramatically during the early pandemic lockdowns, with 30% using up more leftovers, but waste levels are increasing again as people go out more and have less time to cook.
Here are five things you can do:
1) Set your fridge to below 5℃: This can help increase the shelf life of many of the most commonly wasted foods, including fruit, vegetables and dairy products. About 90% of milk waste happens in the home – this adds up to nearly 500 million pints annually in the UK. Setting your fridge to the right temperature can save 50,000 tonnes of milk waste every year. Yet many of us don’t know how to adjust our fridge temperature, or how best to store food.
WRAP, a charity working on cutting waste, has guidance on understanding and adjusting fridge temperatures, and the best ways to stop milk and dairy products being wasted.
2) Single-use plastics: Many of us are seeking to decrease the amount of single-use plastics in our lives, and in our shopping baskets. This is good – but often these plastics and packaging keep food fresh for longer. Fortunately, there are significant developments towards a post-plastic world. Scientists are working on developing methods of treating and storing food that can extend its shelf life. For now, if you’re going to ditch the plastic wrap, make sure you store food in reusable containers in the fridge to maintain freshness.
3) Dish up smaller portions: This results in up to 20% less food waste If you have leftovers, make sure you enjoy them, and don’t forget about them.
The reasons behind domestic food waste are complex. Many of us put our leftovers in the fridge, then forget about them. Fortunately, there are many ways to manage our fridge contents effectively and decrease food waste. These range from apps, to the humble Post-it note, or pen. Labelling leftovers reminds us when they went in – and when they need to be eaten by. Try and freeze meat, dairy and bread if they are close to spoiling – this will extend their life.
4) Buy directly from local suppliers: Our food systems and supply chains are incredibly complex. This complexity, as well as contracts which tend to favour larger suppliers, leads to high levels of food loss and waste. In contrast, buying directly from local suppliers results in less waste and keeps money in the local economy. It’s possible to buy almost anything – fruit, veg, bread, meat, dairy – directly from suppliers. Support a local business, eat quality food, and decrease waste.
Dairy products are high on the list of foods that are often wasted. gbellphotos/Shutterstock
5) Help out at your local food bank: Suppliers often have awkward quantities of fresh food that is damaged and can’t be sold. They are more than happy to get this to a local group that prepares meals or distributes extra food surplus directly to the public – and apps like Too Good To Go are helping restaurants in the UK to do this.
But logistical challenges – and costs – mean that this food often still goes to waste. Food banks often have an excess of tinned and processed food – and a limited amount of fresh food available for people who need it. Let your local redistribution hub know that you’re available to help pick up some spare food and transport it to a nearby redistribution centre.
Food waste is a complex problem that won’t be solved by individual actions alone. Supermarkets are rising to the challenge of shrinking their environmental footprint. But we all need to do what we can to decrease food loss and waste, at the household level and beyond.
Announced today (23 November), the Carbon Innovation Fund will run for three years, offering £1m in grant funding annually to community environmental causes, social enterprises, charities, start-ups and collaborative projects working on solutions for a more sustainable food system.
Ten projects will be awarded each year by the Fund and each successful applicant will be entitled to a share of up to £100,000. Applicants will need to be UK-based but their projects could help decarbonisation at any point in the food system globally.
Co-op said in a statement that it will only support projects that contribute to “real systems change” for food. The company has also said the fund will support the preservation and dissemination of ancient and indigenous knowledge as well as supporting emerging technologies and processes.
“With the Carbon Innovation Fund, we’re looking to do something different; rather than ideas for individual commercial benefit, we want innovations that can be freely shared and can be of benefit to society in general,” said Co-op Food’s chief executive Jo Whitfield.
“It’s this type of co-operation that we believe we need to help accelerate our response to the climate crisis.”
The Fund is being provided with money allocated from the Co-op; the retailer allocates 2p from every £1 of sales to its charitable foundation. Applications are open until 12pm on Friday 10 December 2021.
Earlier this year, the Co-op Group built on a commitment to reach carbon neutrality for all own-brand food and drink by 2025 with a detailed 10-point climate action plan. The firm’s long-term climate goal is net-zero across all scopes, for all Group activities, by 2040.
Then, at COP26 in Glasgow this month, the retailer joined competitors Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose & Partners and Marks & Spencer in signing a new joint commitment to halve the nature and climate impacts of food systems by 2030. This initiative is being orchestrated by WWF.
The news on the Carbon Innovation Fund comes on the same week that John Lewis & Partners, in partnership with environmental charity Hubbub, launched a new £1m fund for innovative projects that help to reduce waste across the food, textiles and technology sectors.
When Rebecca Prince-Ruiz recalls how her eco-friendly movement Plastic Free July has progressed over the years, she can’t help but smile. What began in 2011 as 40 people committing to going plastic-free one month a year has gained momentum to 326 million people pledging to adopt this practice today.
“I’ve seen that uptick in interest every year,” says Ms Prince-Ruiz, who is based in Perth, Australia, and author of Plastic Free: The Inspiring Story of a Global Environmental Movement and Why It Matters.
“These days, people are taking a hard look at what they are doing in their lives and how they can seize an opportunity to be less wasteful,” she says.
Since 2000, the plastics industry has manufactured as much plastic as all the preceding years combined, a World Wildlife Fund report in 2019 found. “The production of virgin plastic has increased 200-fold since 1950, and has grown at a rate of 4% a year since 2000,” the report says.
This has spurred companies to replace single-use plastic with biodegradable and compostable packaging designed to dramatically reduce the toxic footprint plastics leave behind.
In March, Mars Wrigley and Danimer Scientific announced a new two-year partnership to develop compostable packaging for Skittles in the US, estimated to be on shelves by early 2022.
Mars Wrigley plans to have a compostable wrapper for Skittles by next year GETTY IMAGES
It involves a type of polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) that will look and feel the same as plastic, but can be thrown into the compost where it will break down, unlike regular plastic that takes anywhere from 20 to 450 years to fully decompose.
Danimer Scientific’s polymer product is made from canola oil, and it acts similarly to wood, meaning it breaks down when bacteria interact with it. “PHA goes away naturally and is still a very strong material for all types of products,” says Stephen Croskrey, chief executive of Danimer Scientific, based in the US state of Georgia.
Alastair Child, Mars Wrigley vice-president for global sustainability, says: “Our vision is to support a circular economy where packaging never becomes waste and by 2025 we plan to reduce our virgin plastic use by 25% and for 100% of our plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable.”
Polymateria’s plastic biodegrades after three years POLYMATERIA
Hindering the widespread use of eco-friendly packaging such as PHA is the cost. It can be three to fives time as expensive to manufacture as regular plastic.
But that hasn’t stopped companies such as California-based Mango Materials and London-based Polymateria from dedicating their businesses to producing products that biodegrade over a shorter period of time.
For example, Polymateria’s Cycle+ plastic is biodegradable after three years and is still able to be recycled during its usable lifetime. Their clients range from East Africa businesses making bread bags to Extreme E, a new electric racing series that uses Polymateria products for cups and food packaging.
Consumers are demanding biodegradable plastics, says Niall Dunne, chief executive of Polymateria SUZANNE PLUNKETT
The plastics industry should wake up to the growing trend of alternative packaging, says Niall Dunne, chief executive of Polymateria. “We’ve seen how consumer pressure is saying to the big guys that they have to be on board [with reducing their plastic production] and to be more transparent and authentic in this important conversation,” Mr Dunne says.
Meg Sobkowicz, associate professor of plastics engineering at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, says that kind of pressure has already worked to push the plastics industry to steer away from the toxic BPA ingredient that was commonly found in reusable plastic bottles. “I think we’re coming around to where public concern is pushing them to tip the scales in favour of environmentally friendly packaging, despite its costs.”
By David Silverberg
Technology of Business reporte
Tonnes of food scraps collected from restaurants and supermarkets are being converted into electricity under a green energy initiative powering thousands of homes in Perth.
The City of Cockburn has made the waste to energy service a permanent fixture of its general duties, collecting rotting food waste from local businesses and feeding it to a mechanical ‘stomach’ at a nearby fertiliser plant.
The anaerobic digester heats the food, traps its methane gas and feeds the energy into the electricity grid, powering up to 3,000 homes.
Key points:
A giant mechanical stomach is turning tonnes of food waste to energy
The electricity is being fed into the grid, powering 3,000 homes
The City of Cockburn has made the initiative part of its general duties
“Food waste really shouldn’t be thought of as a waste, it should be thought of as a resource,” said the city’s waste education officer, Clare Courtauld.
“It’s really important to take food waste out of landfill because it produces harmful greenhouse gases.
“If global food waste was a country, it would actually be the third-highest greenhouse gas emitter in the world.”
Food scraps are fed to the mechanical stomach around the clock.(Flickr: Taz, CC BY 2.0)
Ms Courtauld said the City had so far recycled 43 tonnes of food waste and saved 81,000 kilograms of CO2 equivalent gasses that would have otherwise entered the atmosphere rotting in landfill.
The $8 million mechanical stomach sits at the Jandakot headquarters of fertiliser company RichGro.
It was the first bio-waste plant of its kind to operate in the southern hemisphere when it opened in 2016.
“Their trucks come in … they tip off the food waste.
“It then goes through a piece of machinery which removes any packaging that might be in with the food waste and any contamination.
“It pulps the food waste up into like a porridge consistency and doses it into a big tank.
The food waste is pulped into a rich slurry and pumped into the digester.(ABC News: Gian De Poloni)
“This tank then feeds the two digesters … they’re getting fed 24 hours a day.
“As it breaks down, it generates methane gas. We’re capturing that gas and we’re running large generators that combined can produce up to 2.4 megawatts of electricity.”
The plant powers the company’s entire operations and up to 3,000 neighbouring homes, all from food waste.
What goes in, must come out
“Out the back end comes a liquid that is actually certified organic as a liquid fertilizer,” Mr Richards said.
“We sell a percentage of that to farmers and the remaining percentage of it we add into our compost piles.”
The bioenergy plant converts the methane gas from food waste into electricity to feed into the local power grid.(ABC News: Gian De Poloni)
Some foods are better than others.
“Certainly, you can overdo a good thing — you wouldn’t want too much fats, oils and greases.
“A lot of fruit and vege, starchy, sugary products are good. They produce a lot of energy.”
The City’s waste manager, Lyall Davieson, said there was community appetite for these sorts of initiatives.
“I’ve been in waste for about 25 years,” he said.
“Not so long ago, all we could really do was just recycle a few cans and a bit of steel.
“But now we really have at our disposal lots of options to divert waste from landfill and to recycle.”
The energy created from food waste is fed into the existing electricity grid, powering up to 3,000 homes.(ABC News: Gian De Poloni)
Frank Scarvaci, who owns a longstanding independent supermarket in Hamilton Hill, was one of the first businesses to sign up for the service.
He said it was a natural progression for his grocery store after embracing a plastic bag ban and installing solar power.
“I’ve been surprised [at] how the community has accepted the change,” he said.
“I thought [there] was going to be much more resistance in regards to when they scrapped plastic bags, for example — but there was virtually no resistance at all.”
Contamination causes indigestion
While common in Europe, the plant is just one of a few of its kind to be built in Australia.
People living close to the plant in Perth’s southern suburbs wouldn’t even know their homes are being powered by food waste.(ABC News: Gian De Poloni)
The City of Cockburn said it was not a waste service it would expand to households, because the risk of contamination disrupting the process was too high.
“We do have a machine that does have a certain ability to remove a level of the contamination,” Mr Richards said.
“Can it remove everything? No, it can’t.
“We’ve even had bowling balls come through — you can’t process things like that, in a system like this. It does damage our machinery.”
Bio-energy has a bright future
The bio-energy technology is growing in Australia, with the next logical step in the process to convert the bio-waste into biomethane, which could be fed into the gas grid.
The Federal Government is co-funding a biomethane production facility at a wastewater treatment plant in Sydney’s southern suburbs.
Once online in 2022, the $14 million plant is expected to pump biomethane derived from biogas created by a similar ‘mechanical stomach’ that would meet the gas needs of more than 13,000 homes.
Every time a cow burps, it releases a bit of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that traps more heat than carbon-dioxide.
The livestock sector accounts for a significant 14.5 per cent of man-made greenhouse gas emissions and, in the Asia Pacific region, demand for dairy products is growing along with its middle class.
Driven by the growing number of cattle farms, methane emissions are at an all-time high, and could cause a disastrous global temperature rise of three to four degrees Celsius by 2100 if left unchecked, according to a recent Stanford University study.
“Emissions from cattle and other ruminants (herbivorous mammals) are almost as large as those from the fossil fuel industry for methane,” said Rob Jackson, a professor of Earth system science at the university who led the study. “People joke about burping cows without realising how big the source really is.”
With demand for beef and other meats expected to increase in tandem with growing wealth in countries such as China and India, some companies are taking steps to help the animal farming industry reduce its environmental impact.
Global nutrition, health and sustainable living company DSM, one of the world’s leading producers of nutritional ingredients, is testing an animal feed additive for cows that has reduced their methane emissions by about 30 per cent in previous and ongoing trials.
In August, the firm also launched a strategic initiative called “We Make It Possible” to make animal farming sustainable. It takes as its targets the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals 2, 3, 12, 13 and 14, which aim for zero hunger, good health and well-being for all, responsible consumption and production, action against climate change, and sustainable use of marine resources respectively by 2030.
Peter Fisher, DSM’s regional vice-president for animal health and nutrition in Asia Pacific, said that while plant-based diets have become more popular, meat still makes up a significant portion of many meals. “We have to figure out how to meet this demand in a responsible and sustainable way, and we have to do this with urgency,” he said.
To feed a world population of 9.7 billion by 2050, scientists have highlighted the need to avoid further deforestation, grow more efficiently on existing farms and shift to less meat-intensive diets, among other measures.
We have to figure out how to meet this demand in a responsible and sustainable way, and we have to do this with urgency.
Peter Fisher, regional vice-president for animal health and nutrition in Asia Pacific, DSM
Transforming farming
DSM’s initiative will promote its products and initiatives in six areas: Improving farm animals’ health and yield; improving the quality of food while reducing food waste and loss; cutting livestock emissions; making more efficient use of natural resources; reducing reliance on marine resources; and tackling anti-microbial resistance.
One of DSM’s solutions, a feed additive for cows called Bovaer, is currently undergoing trials in New Zealand and Australia and pending registration for use in Europe. When mixed into a cow’s feed, it inhibits an enzyme in the animal that triggers the production of methane. The additive has already been tested in over 30 farm trials, with over 25 peer-reviewed studies published in science journals attesting to its efficacy and showing no negative effects on the cows’ health or milk.
The company also created Hy-D, a vitamin D additive already on the market that helps pigs and chickens to build stronger skeletons and lead healthier and longer lives. This means that pigs can have more piglets over their lifetime, among other advantages for farmers. Feeding Hy-D to chickens also enables them to lay eggs that have shells that are about four per cent thicker, reducing egg breakages during packing and transport by about 15 per cent.
Each year, about 16 million tonnes of wild oily fish such as anchovies, sprat and capelin are caught and processed into fish meal and fish oil for aquaculture. The oil, in particular, contains two omega-3 fatty acids, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), that are used to grow nutritious fish for human consumption, especially in the salmon industry.
To reduce the reliance on these marine resources, DSM has partnered with another firm, Evonik, to produce EPA and DHA by fermenting natural marine algae. The amount of EPA and DHA in one tonne of the algal oil is equivalent to that in 60 tonnes of the wild-caught fish. DSM said that the partnership can currently meet 15 per cent of the salmon industry’s demand for EPA and DHA, equivalent to saving 1.2 million tonnes of wild-caught fish per year.
Fisher said that the firm will also help farmers make more efficient use of local crops for their animal feeds and other needs. “If they can do that, they won’t have to transport resources from across the world, and this will reduce their environmental footprint,” he explained.
He noted that the world’s growing population and demand for animal protein will continue to put huge and increasing pressure on its finite natural resources. “Along with the strain on the environment, this threatens to take our food systems well beyond the planet’s boundaries,” he said.
“Through our new strategic initiative, we hope to achieve a transformation in animal farming that will not only ensure a decent living for farmers but make animal farming sustainable and foster a brighter future.”
