In this week's newsletter we want to talk about the importance of circular food design.
The focus lies specifically on the word 'design' - you might ask why?
In the design phase, responsible stakeholders, such as food manufacturers, brands and chefs, decide what ingredients we, consumers, end up eating and how diverse they are. Despite the vast availability of crops and plants, humans currently rely on 15 crops only for 75% of their food intake.
To diversify our ingredients, innovate with new or forgotten crops and plants, and to create more bio-diversity by moving away from monocultures, we need to change the way we design our foods. It is an essential stepping stone.
Circular food design is important for the planet because it represents a sustainable and regenerative approach to the food system. The concept of a circular food system is inspired by the principles of a circular economy, which aims to minimise waste and make the most of available resources.
The Ellen McArthur Big Food Redesign Challenge hones in on exactly this opportunity. The Foundation, in partnership with the Sustainable Food Trust, launched the Big Food Redesign Challenge to catalyse and inspire the food industry to regenerate nature by applying the principles of circular design to food.
The Challenge brings together producers, retailers, start-ups, and suppliers to accelerate the design of food that aims to allow nature to thrive.
Of course, we applied with nihilo to be part of this challenge and got accepted as one of the innovative early stage startups earlier this year. As a participant of the challenge we were invited into the first stage earlier this year, which entailed the design of our product using circular design principles. Through the challenge we got access to the world’s largest product and ingredient impact measurement tool, HowGood’s Latis platform, which allowed us to create a high level lifecycle-analysis of our product, and understand better how we can reduce the environmental footprint of the coffee industry.
We submitted our product design and our product story to the Challenge in October and have since been waiting to hear if we made it through to the production phase.
Last week we got the news that we were selected as one of the innovative businesses to progress through to the production stage.
What this means for us, we will tell you in the next newsletter! Stay tuned.
