How Recycling Food Could Help Save The Planet
According to Maclean, a wave of innovative new upcycled products indicates growing corporate buy-in for diverting all manner of edible waste—leftovers, discarded produce, even invasive species—away from landfills and back onto our plates.
Companies cashing in on the zero-waste trend are both monolith and mini: take the juice giant Ocean Spray, which in 2020 rolled out Cranberry Seeds, a new offering that upcycles a key ingredient into a nutritional product; or Montreal’s Wilder Harrier, which repurposes the noted ecosystem nuisance of Asian carp into dinners—for dogs. Who says consumption is always bad for the environment?
According to research by the National Zero Waste Council, Canadians alone waste nearly 2.2 million tonnes of food each year; a 2019 report by the Toronto non-profit Second Harvest revealed that 4.82 million tonnes of food are lost at the processing and manufacturing stages. These revelations are particularly dire in light of the fact that more than five million Canadians regularly experience food insecurity, or a lack of reliable access to affordable and nutritious food.
