Reimagining the food system to solve the wicked problem of food waste
In 2020 the UN estimated that nearly 10% of the world’s population struggled with food insecurity, a figure that is certain to worsen amid the social and economic disruptions of the pandemic. Solving world hunger is not only a humanitarian issue, it is an environmental one. The second of the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals is to end food insecurity and malnutrition, and to promote sustainable agriculture.
The issue of food waste came up earlier this month at propelland’s annual cross-disciplinary summit in San Francisco. propelland is committed to helping clients address sustainability challenges, including those related to the global food system, and we are always looking for new ways to make our services useful in this space. During the summit the propelland team conducted a hackathon to explore how we could apply our core expertise in strategy, design, and engineering to reduce food waste.
A good hackathon begins with a clear and straightforward question. In our case the prompt was, “How might we resolve food waste?” A key insight that propellers brought to the hackathon is this: food waste might be a market failure, but it’s not an intractable one.
There is no shortage of alarming statistics about food waste and its connection to climate instability
- 40% of all food produced in the U.S. is wasted
- $161 billion in uneaten food at retailers, restaurants, and homes
- Food is the single largest municipal waste source, at 20% of landfill weight, and the methane released by food is a greenhouse gas 21X more harmful than CO2
Yet underneath these grim statistics are opportunities:
- Diverting 15% of the food that currently goes to waste would be enough to cut the number of food-insecure Americans in half
- Food waste can be composted into sustainable soil additives or be used to generate electricity
- Encouraging institutions to purchase so-called “ugly” produce would help farmers find new markets for healthy products that currently go to waste
Food waste is what economists call an “externality” — an unfortunate byproduct of economic activity that is excluded from the balance sheet, regardless of the long-term harm it might cause an organization or the broader society. It is a complex problem, but one generalized cause stands out — gaps in information that distort supply and demand and obscure the value in excess food. As in any other economic activity, information is power, and in our hackathon the propellers seemed instinctively driven to create new market signals — information delivered at the right place and the right time — to reshape decision-making and attach new economic value to excess food.
The propellers were divided into 5 teams, each of which was given 4 hours to develop a solution and demonstrate how it would reduce food waste. They were asked to prototype their idea in some way, because at propelland we like to say that a prototype is worth 1,000 decks. The criteria for judging these prototypes were straightforward: the solution should be novel, useful, and sustainable (socially, economically, and environmentally).
The finished prototypes were presented using stories, skits, and even a LEGO model. One concept sought to connect households with food banks through e-commerce. Another sought to channel agricultural waste as an input for geothermal energy production. Still another concept explored how urban commercial spaces emptied by the pandemic could be reimagined as vertical farms.
A judging panel along with all the hackathon participants concluded the session by voting for a winning solution, which propelland will now invest in to generate a business concept and minimum viable product in 2022. Stay tuned for more stories about the winning concept, which we’ll be excited to talk about as it develops in the coming months.
