Residual materials found in food processing surplus streams – often categorized as “waste” – can be reused as upcycled ingredients if fair pricing can be ensured. 

In this budding market, a current go-to solution for many food manufacturers is to downcycle and sell waste streams as animal feed. However, this becomes a massive loss when these resources are of premium quality and fit for human consumption. 

Non-profit organization Circle Economy flags that F&B producers still require stronger incentives to valorize all their waste streams, which are an incentive the linear economic system does not provide.

Valorizing residual biscuit dough
As an initiative of Circle Economy, Coalition Circular Accounting (CCA) is exploring opportunities to salvage and valorize residual resource streams before they are turned into animal feed or disposed of as waste. 

Using biscuit dough as an upcycling case in its report, CCA teamed up with Netherlands-based cooperative IntelligentFood to learn more about its repurposing of residual biscuit dough from Europastry, a manufacturer of dough for the frozen bakery sector.

“We use residual puff pastry dough from the industrial baker Europastry,” Junio Hanenberg, founder of IntelligentFood, tells FoodIngredientsFirst. “From this dough we make, among other things, coffee biscuits.”

“We also create molds for apple cakes and mini pizzas. Other different recipes for upcycled ingredients are invented by bread and pastry students.”

Without an established market, the value for upcycled dough remains unclear and is a topic of negotiation primarily between the dough manufacturer and the buyer, explains Fischer at Circle Economy.

“We have done the assessment for residual dough from biscuit production lines,” she continues. 

“We have researched the minimum price [animal feed price] and the maximum price [virgin dough price] and have debated with accountants, financiers and other stakeholders what would be the right price for this food waste.”

CCA’s report provides potential options for accounting for the residual resources, based on a situation wher profit margins after sales of the final product constitute the value of the resources used.  

Massively untapped resources
In the area of food waste, upcycling has been pegged as “the new recycling,” by Innova Market Insights in its “The Sustain Domain” Top Trend for 2020.

“The fact that there is no market price yet for this ‘in between’ category [of upcycled ingredients] leads to difficult questions like ‘what is a fair price.’ The price affects the gains for all stakeholders in the value chain,” Aglaia Fischer, project manager at Circle Economy, tells FoodIngredientsFirst. 

Circle Economy highlights that 88 million metric tons of food is wasted annually in the EU alone. An estimated third of that waste occurs before food items even hit the shelves. In some F&B categories, waste is particularly hard to avoid because of a lack of knowledge, logistical challenges or expiration dates. 

Food waste was found to have inched up amid COVID-19, with the CMCC Foundation recently flagging large cities as the largest source of post-consumption loss.

CCA stresses that current accounting models do not incorporate environmental impact well enough. “Currently, accounting models and investors focus too much on profit and do not take environmental or societal aspects into account,” it stresses.

In its latest report entitled Valorising Residual Resources, CCA further elaborates on the financial, accounting and legal aspects of valorizing food waste and the organizational challenges of being “circular in a linear world.”

Upcycling solutions elevate food chain circularity
To help counter the risk of a global “food gap,” F&B leaders have unveiled new solutions this year that help channel waste from production and processing into value-added streams. CP Kelco’s Nutrava Citrus Fiber, for instance, is sourced from intact citrus peels from the juicing industry and is marketed as a replacement for eggs, starch and xanthan gum.

Also in this space, Renewal Mill specializes in “oat okara” – a nutritious flour made from the pulp leftover when plant milk is made. The company primarily works with pulps such as oat pulp, soybean pulp and almond pulp. 

Last November, Barry Callebaut began a new eco initiative to upcycle its cocoa shells into biochar, which looks similar to charcoal, supplies green energy, and reduces carbon emissions at the chocolate and cocoa giant’s operations.

Meanwhile, Germany-based start-up Spoontainable has created edible spoons that provide a circular and environment-neutral alternative to single-use cutlery. The manufacturer upcycles unused cocoa shells and oat husks in the process.

Transforming food waste into products for human consumption could become standard practice as the world’s population grows, according to a recent report by Oakland Innovation, part of a consumer science group.