Every year, about a third of the food prepared for human consumption is wasted. This staggering loss tallies over $650 billion in the industrialized world alone, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization. That鈥檚 bigger than half the globe鈥檚 entire annual crop of cereals.
Part of the problem is intractable: There鈥檚 no 鈥渇ood police,鈥� and there won鈥檛 be anytime soon. It鈥檚 costly and invasive to decide what should or shouldn鈥檛 go in the trash, and criminalizing waste risks disproportionate harm and unintended consequences. Fortunately, part of the solution to humanity鈥檚 big squander may be simple: food recycling.
Don鈥檛 worry, it isn鈥檛 as gross as it sounds. Much of the food we junk is perfectly good 鈥� and can even be intercepted before it hits the bin. A recent Rockefeller Foundation-funded report traced much of the trouble not to spoiled food, but to overcentralized and oversubsidized production, which can lead, for instance, to so much unsold bread that even charities can鈥檛 absorb all the extra.
Which gets us back to food recycling. While it鈥檚 relatively difficult to convince people to buy unsold bread, it turns out it鈥檚 not so big a challenge to offer them something special made out of that bread: premium beer.
That鈥檚 right. On a recent trip to Belgium, food waste activist Tristam Stuart stumbled across a special brew based on an ancient bread fermentation recipe. Linking up with Rob Wilson, U.K. head of the social entrepreneurship incubator Ashoka, Stuart set about producing his own Toast Ale, the only beer with a 鈥渟lice鈥� of bread in every bottle 鈥� or the recycled bread equivalent anyway.
There鈥檚 an extra touch of genius in using unsold bread to produce beer. In addition to directly decreasing bread waste, it also cuts down on the beer-driven demand for grains, reducing production. Toast鈥檚 approach replaces about a third of the malted barley that鈥檚 typically used in the brewing process.
And it does so in partnership with legit breweries, to ensure that its beverages are so high in quality that Stuart and his team can keep standards up on that unsold bread too. 鈥淲e would rather use the breweries that already exist and the knowledge at those breweries so that we can focus on maximizing the quantity of bread that we’re able to recover,鈥� explains Madi Holtzman, Toast Ale鈥檚 U.S. director. Yep 鈥� they鈥檙e in America too.
Nobody鈥檚 saying beer is the solution to all the world鈥檚 problems 鈥� though when it comes to booze, it鈥檚 hard to find a more solutions-oriented product. If the world is going to make any real headway in approaching the U.N.鈥檚 goal to halve wasted consumables by 2030, we鈥檙e going to have to get creative with recycling food.
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