Happy Monday!

This week is Food Waste Action Week, so we cover:

Loving Local Waste: How Ramborn are focusing on supporting Luxembourg farmers.
UpCycled Certified: What is it, and how can your business benefit?
In case you missed it: 💥 #6 - Meet the Brands: Rubies in the Rubble are packing a punch in the fight against food waste, featuring Jenny Costa, Founder and CEO.

> Good News Last Week

🎯 Biona Organic announced their partnership with City Harvest London has resulted in 24,560 boxes of food being donated in 2021.

🎯 BY SARAH LONDON announced they’ve certified as B Corp.

🎯 Simply Lunch launched their Plant Powered range. All items feature carbon labels and are carbon neutral, after working with My Emissions and Ecologi.

🎯 Circla are debuting their pop-up "Precious Waste" from 7th-12th March at 230 Portobello Road. They’ve gathered 40 brands that are all leading the way in the transition to a circular economy. Brands like Stroodles are involved.

🎯 Better Dairy announced its $22 million Series A funding round. Founded in 2019, the UK based food company uses precision fermentation to produce cheese at a fraction of the carbon footprint.

⭐️ Kafoodle announced its partnership with My Emissions, providing integrated food carbon labelling for all Kafoodle clients.

⭐️ Pandora announced their $1 million donation to UNICEF, to support children affected by the humanitarian crisis unfolding.

⭐️ AWS launched a carbon tracking tool for its cloud customers. As part of The Climate Pledge, estimates include data on Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions - free to use and accessible to any customer.

⚡️ Re Bottle, RBC Group and City to Sea have been granted £3 million by Innovate UK to scale up 'Re’, a reuse packaging model project founded by Beauty Kitchen UK Ltd. Their goal is to save over 100 million empty bottles from landfill within three years using the ‘Re’ model.

⚡️ WRAP launched the Refill Coalition, in partnership with Marks and Spencer, Morrisons, Ocado Group, Waitrose & Partners, CHEP and Unpackaged Innovation Ltd. The coalition will look at co-designing a new refill solution, with the potential to test the solution in stores later in 2022.

⚡️ World leaders, environment ministers and representatives from 173 countries have agreed to develop a legally binding treaty on plastics. Described as the most important multilateral environmental deal since the Paris climate accord in 2015 by the head of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the resolution calls for a treaty covering the “full lifecycle” of plastics from production to disposal.

> Click on each link to read more.

> Brand Spotlight

Loving Local Waste: How Ramborn are focusing on supporting Luxembourg farmers.

The first Luxembourg-based cidery, Ramborn Cider Co was founded when a group of friends wanted to make an impact in their local community while sharing their traditional cider with the world. After learning about the extent of fruit waste in regional farms, the team set out to transform this waste, while bringing back life to the traditional orchards in the countryside. The mission statement is best summarized by this B Corp’s triple bottom line: uplifting people, planet, and profit, for the benefit of all.

For Ramborn, local farmers are the center of the business. Be it farms with thousands of trees or even just one, Ramborn works to bring economic opportunity to rural communities by providing a fair wage for produce that otherwise would have gone unsold. In return, their community of 100+ farmers helps reduce food waste and work with Ramborn to plant and maintain new trees. So far, Ramborn has saved 739,510kg of food waste, equivalent to 57% of all the fruit Ramborn has pressed to date.

The planet’s health is essential to Ramborn’s production. Apples and pears are grown with no pesticides or irrigation to limit environmental impact. The orchards themselves help capture carbon from the atmosphere and provide a refuge for local wildlife who have relied on the rural orchards for centuries. The company avoids heavy industrialization to minimize impact, channeling circular design principles to help lower energy consumption across their operations. The result? Ramborn is responsible for the protection and nurturing of nearly 1 million square meters of rich biodiverse habitat, which itself is home to over 5,000 animal species.

As a registered B Corporation, Ramborn has voluntarily decided to meet a series of social and environmental guidelines. Ramborn’s dedication to making an impact has earned them a score of 97, well above the 80 required to become a B Corp and significantly ahead of the 50.9 median score of companies who have taken the impact assessment. They were even listed as a ‘Best for the World’ B Corp in 2021. Becoming a blueprint for an altruistic business is a source of pride for the company, which hopes others can join the journey for transforming business for good - especially during B Corp month. The company’s success doesn’t stop there, as Ramborn’s Cider has also won its fair share of awards - proving unloved produce and a more circular business model can be significantly tastier

Read more about Ramborn’s impact here, the growing movement of B Corporations, and the impact of food waste.

Support Ramborn via their shop:

Shop Ramborn

*Visiting a Ramborn partner orchard. Source: ramborn.com*

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> Quick Take

UpCycled Certified: What is it, and how can your business benefit?

A week dedicated to spotlighting the issue of food waste, Food Waste Action Week is in its second year of creating lasting change. With almost half of people who came across last years messaging changing their behaviour as a result, WRAP’s campaign aims to hit even harder in 2022. Data shows that with the easing of lockdown came the rise in household food waste and levels are now equaling 2018. With time pressure as a main driver of food waste as people return to their pre-pandemic lifestyles, there is a need for

Globally, the production of food accounts for 37% of greenhouse gas emissions with strains upon land, energy and water resources. While there are practices looking at reducing these impacts, Food Waste Action Week is focussing not on the farm but on the fork. With up to 40% of food now wasted, we have a responsibility to ensure these pressures were not placed upon our environment for these products to just be put in the bin. Wasting food feeds climate change - this needs to change.

What can you do as a business?

Many traditional business models perceive waste as a loss in resource and revenue, hitting the bottom line as an accepted cost. However, more and more businesses are taking the opposite approach. Choosing instead to see the value in waste and creating an additional revenue stream for the business; while being full of purpose for the planet. Some businesses (like Rubies in the Rubble) are simply basing their whole business model on surplus.

This is where The Upcycled Certified Programme comes in, launched by the Upcycled Food Association (UFA) in 2021. As a world first, the programme certifies ingredients and products as upcycled to demonstrate the value in redirecting surplus back into the human food chain and building a more resilient food system. In line with the UN sustainable development goal 12.3: to halve food waste by 2030, the UFA aims for Upcycled food products to be sold in every grocery store in the US by 2030.

So what is upcycled and how does the certification work?

‘Upcycled’ is defined as ingredients and products produced with surplus food or food by-products from manufacturing, that use verifiable supply chains and have a positive impact on the planet. The certification awards an ingredient or product as ‘Upcycled Certified’ once it meets a threshold of diverted surplus.

How does Upcycled Certified define upcycled?

Upcycled foods are made from ingredients that would otherwise ended up in a food waste destination. Upcycling makes better use of the resources which have gone into growing, transporting and preparing the food. Rather than sending the surplus to landfill or as animal feed.
Upcycled foods are value-added products. In the UK, 70% of food waste from households is equivalent to £14 billion a year. Upcycling captures this value.
Upcycled foods are for human consumption. Elevating food to its highest and best use, as per the food waste hierarchy principles.
Upcycled foods have an auditable supply chain. Putting no extra pressure on the environment but maximising value gained from the land, including nutrients.
Upcycled foods indicate which ingredients are upcycled on their labels. Empowering consumers to use their pound as a form of activism and vote to end food waste.

Food labels have never been more important, with an increasing demand for traceability of ingredients and practices from consumers. From QR codes to carbon footprints, this has never been more prevalent in the food industry, allowing consumers to align their values with products on the shelves. The Upcycled certification gives consumers the opportunity to prevent food waste with every purchase.

*The UpCycled Certified Label. Source: upcycledfood.org*

What now?

See the Upcycled certified Standard here to certify your products like these brands:

Pulp Pantry are creating real veggie chips upcycled from cold-pressed juice pulp.
Good Sport Nutrition upcycle dairy by-product to harness electrolytes, B vitamins and carbohydrates from milk.
Lost & Found Distillery are the first company to upcycle excess baked goods into food, beverage and pharmaceutical-grade ethanol, for hand sanitiser to vodka.

Have a waste stream within your business that you can turn into a quality product? Or have an idea to turn someone else’s waste product into a new business? Now is the time to get creative. Check out some other businesses that have done just that:

Wholesaler Curd & Cure launched The Rescue Range during Food Waste Action Week 2021 in their fight against food waste. Upcycling surplus food within their business into a new range of soups.
Wasted Kitchen turn surplus fruit and veg from Macknade’s shop floor into new products which make their way back onto the same shelves.
Toast Ale uses surplus bread to replace barley in their “plant-saving” brewing process.

*UpCycled Certified Brands. Source: upcycledfood.org*

> In case you missed it

💥 #6 - Meet the Brands: Rubies in the Rubble are packing a punch in the fight against food waste.

Following the Footprints

🌱 Food Waste Action Week: How UpCycling Can…