Upcycling ingredients: Foodvalley NL highlights potential to add value to food waste

17 Aug 2023 --- Foodvalley NL is outlining the largely untapped potential of upcycling side streams from food production into new food-grade ingredients to create a more circular food system. Speaking to Nutrition Insight, the Netherlands-based organization offers a look into its activities to foster collaboration and innovations in this field.

Worldwide, one-third of food produced every year – 1.3 billion metric tons – is lost or wasted, flags the organization. These losses account for around 8% of all global greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans. 

Upcycling aims to optimize raw materials from food losses and side streams to develop food or feed products. It has risen in prominence among proponents of circularity, coming into play in various launches including beverages made from discarded coffee cherry fruit, as well as an umami-boosting ingredient for plant-based meat upcycled from winemaking waste.

Although prevention of food losses is the priority, Foodvalley NL sees valorizing unavoidable losses as the “second-best alternative.” 

In this segment of our two-part interview with Jolijn Zwart-van Kessel, Foodvalley NL’s innovation lead in Circular Agrifood, Nutrition Insight discusses the potential of upcycling to avoid food losses and transition the food system toward sustainable food. 

Upcycling aims to optimize raw materials from food losses or side streams to develop food or feed.“Throughout the whole value chain, we see that many side streams and materials are still being considered waste and not as a potentially valuable raw material for another partner in a different value chain. Part of the problem is a lack of visibility of these streams and the knowledge to use them most efficiently.” 

Foodvalley NL unites an international group of partners in its Upcycling Community, where stakeholders “collaborate across value chains and exchange knowledge on upcycling food losses toward food and feed,” says Zwart-Van Kessel. 

“Our initiatives and community target the full value chain. We stimulate innovations and collaboration on developing upcycled products to introduce to the market.” 

In last week’s first part of this interview, Zwart-Van Kessel highlighted the Foodvalley NL’s initiatives in regenerative agriculture, also within the scope of the organization’s circular agri-food innovation vision. 

Upcycling as the new industry normal
Foodvalley NL’s Upcycling Community has reported “strong growth” within its member base amid an influx of new entrants from industry. However, industry players flag that companies must step up to ensure that upcycled products are more attractive to consumers. 

“In the Upcycling Community, we strive to make upcycling the new normal. The community members exchange information on upcycling ideas for products, technologies and necessary system approaches,” explains Zwart-Van Kessel. 

Although upcycling ensures that materials are not wasted but reused, the ecological footprint of some upcycling technologies can still be relatively large. Moreover, some technologies can be expensive and challenging to scale commercially. 

Addressing these issues will require enhanced collaboration to foster innovation and scaling, emphasizes Zwart-Van Kessel. 

“Besides sharing best practices, the community also seeks to achieve systemic changes by exploring and addressing barriers that currently stand in the way of increasing upcycling, such as issues around product quality, food safety, legislation and policies. These barriers cannot be addressed by an individual party alone but require collective action.” 

For example, Zwart-Van Kessel shares that the community partners communicated with the US Upcycled Food Association, which helped determine if and how to best market upcycling products while exploring best practices from the US market regarding upcycling labels to make products more recognizable for the consumer.

Art of valorizing side streams
One area where the community sees opportunities to upcycle materials is in horticulture, where side streams – such as plant materials not used for food – contain many valuable nutrients like proteins and fibers, explains Zwart-Van Kessel. A key challenge is processing these materials optimally, as they are commonly composted.

Foodvalley NL’s Upcycling Community partners collaborate on system issues to advance upcycling.“Imagine the potential to process plant materials into food ingredients, such as plant-based protein or fibers. Once cost-efficient technology can be applied to refine the compounds, there are great opportunities to upcycle plant materials. Research has done it but needs to be brought to scale.” 

To support these efforts, Foodvalley NL organized a challenge for start-ups on upcycling of horticulture side streams into valuable proteins, enzymes or supplements in collaboration with SIGN (Dutch Foundation for Innovation in Greenhouse Horticulture). 

The winning company – Grassa – received a stimulation budget to realize a pilot to produce at least 500 kg of plant proteins from tomato side streams, specifically leaves and stems. Recently, Grassa also joined forces with Schouten Europe to research and test the potential of grass protein as they apply to greenlight the ingredient as a novel food in Europe.

“The challenge aimed to scale these products and bring them to the market,” adds Zwart-Van Kessel. “We also see opportunities to apply the refinery technology developed by the winning company in other horticulture products.”

“We also cooperate with the other innovation areas of Foodvalley NL – Food & Health and Protein Transition – to help reach our upcycling and circular ambitions. For example, using upcycled plant protein in protein transition products to make healthier products.”

Insects for food
Another upcycling approach Foodvalley NL takes is utilizing insects as food and as an animal feed resource. Foodvalley NL has built a coalition of partners active in insect value chains, aiming to bring new insect-based products to the market and help the sector grow its organizational capacity. 

Researchers recently discovered that insect farming generates less greenhouse gas emissions and uses less water and land than conventional animal farming, in a review of over 130 articles on edible insects. 

In June, the European Food Safety Authority issued a positive opinion on the safety and nutritional value of the Tenebrio molitor species. This closely followed the UK’s approval of crickets as a novel food.

Though Foodvalley NL is optimistic about developments in the sector, insect protein as raw material is not yet economically viable, and legislation, in some cases, prohibits use for human consumption. 

“The coalition partners agree that more research and information is needed on the sustainability of insects and how they can contribute to health to make insects and future insect-based products a valuable part of a circular food system,” notes Zwart-Van Kessel. 

A coalition of partners in insect value chains aims to bring new products to the market, such as insect protein.“We need to collect what has been researched on insects’ ecological footprint, animal welfare, emissions and potential health benefits to create a science-based narrative for insect products. We then need to align with partners across insect value chains in the Netherlands and Europe on the value of insects in food and feed, supporting that with evidence from practice.”

“Although the insect sector has grown substantially, it is still very young and needs to be organized better,” highlights Zwart-Van Kessel. “With our coalition partners, we identified several barriers for further growth regarding legislative changes needed, finding buyers and markets for raw materials.”  

In this initiative, Foodvalley NL partners with global stakeholders such as the Network for Insect Knowledge in the Netherlands, the European International Platform of Insects for Food and Feed and Enterprise Singapore. 

Unifying product claims
Together with community partners and knowledge institutions, Foodvalley NL is developing an international position paper on the definitions of upcycled food and how to make claims regarding these products and ingredients.

“This paper aims to align international stakeholders on the terminology and potential of upcycling,” states the organization. “Companies and producers have different views on upcycling, challenging the sector because policies are not aligned and supporting subsidies vary. There is no coordinated focus of all food system players on what barriers to overcome.”  

With this position paper, Foodvalley NL aims to provide recommendations to different players in the whole ecosystem. It is also meant to build awareness among food and feed producers about how they look at discarded raw materials. 

“We need to build awareness among producers that what they consider waste can be a valuable input material for producers or companies in other value chains.”

By Jolanda van Hal