SIG initiative converts food waste into nutritious meals preserved in aseptic cartons

18 Sep 2019 --- A flagship project in Bangladesh that provides underprivileged children with healthy school meals using surplus crops has been launched by SIG Combibloc (SIG), under its charity arm Way Beyond Good Foundation. Coined Cartons for Good, the project applies SIG’s technology to empower communities to reduce food loss, support farmers’ livelihoods and promote children’s nutrition and education. The project is in partnership with Bangladesh-based development NGO, BRAC.

“Already, during our ongoing pilot phase, we are evaluating the scaling of the project,” Holger Dickers, Managing Director of the SIG Way Beyond Good Foundation, tells PackagingInsights. “One of the key ideas of Cartons for Good was to reach to rural areas where our solution would bring the biggest benefits – our concept is a mobile food filling unit, which can travel to these locations.”

Cartons For Good.SIG’s expert engineers adapted the company’s filling technology to create a mobile unit where nutritious meals can be prepared using excess crops and be preserved in aseptic cartons for later use. Housed in a shipping container on a trailer, the unit is designed to travel from one community to the next to preserve surpluses at harvest time. The initial pilot is in the region of Balia, Bangladesh.

In addition to converting food loss into an upcycling opportunity, farmers are paid for their excess produce, providing them with much-needed income. The packs of food are used by local schools to provide healthy, hot meals for children every day.

“The filled packages will have a shelf life of around six months,” says Dickers. “This mobile food filling system has been specially developed for its intended purpose – using SIG's technological know-how. Special focus was put on easy operation and maintenance on site. We are already now using this pilot phase to optimize the technology.”

The first meals created in this unique mobile filing unit are already being distributed to BRAC schools in impoverished communities in Dhaka, where many children drop out of school because they need to work to feed themselves and their families. After use, the empty cartons will be recycled at a local facility.Through the program, food waste is converted to nutritious school meals.

“While Balia currently functions as the pilot region for the project, we still plan to move our mobile food filling unit to other regions in the future. For example, this could help account for the varying seasonal availability of vegetables – and thus differing levels of food loss – across the different regions,” explains Dickers.

Almost 20 percent of the population in Bangladesh suffers from malnutrition and almost half the children are underweight, notes SIG. At the same time, food is going to waste because each harvest produces more than farmers can sell locally and they have no way of preserving surplus crops.

“This is a true innovation outside our traditional core business, but is perfectly in line with SIG’s purpose of bringing nutritious food products to consumers around the world in a safe, sustainable and affordable way,” says Rolf Stangl, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the SIG Way Beyond Good Foundation and CEO of SIG.

The World Food Programme (WFP) has previously asserted that malnutrition is "multifaceted" and requires action in the private sector. Meanwhile, over two billion people are estimated to not have regular access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food, with 820 million people not having enough to eat in 2018 – marking an increase from 811 million in 2017. This is according to this year’s UN report, The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, which calls for a multisectoral approach.

Established in 2018, the SIG Way Beyond Good Foundation envisions a future in which good nutrition and clean water will be available to everyone and natural habitats will be preserved for future generations.

By Benjamin Ferrer