In the shadow of abundance

In Markus Hurschler's everyday life, everything revolves around food. But every day a little differently. He runs the small company Foodways with 6 employees in Bern and Zurich, is a project manager and tries to keep enough time free for himself so that new ideas can emerge. On Food Day, he spoke on the topic of "Food Waste".

Food-related consulting services are your business. Can you briefly explain your business model?

Markus Hurschler: We are a consulting company with a special focus on sustainability projects in the food industry. In this very future-oriented niche, we work together with companies, NGOs and public authorities. Our goal is that every project we implement makes an innovative contribution to a sustainable food economy. To this end, we work both in traditional mandate relationships for individual clients, but also initiate our own project ideas.

How has your specialised company developed since its foundation?

In winter 2012 we started in my business partner's attic with simple means (no heating). Today we are a growing team of six employees at Spitalgasse in Bern and in a part-time office in Zurich.

What prompted you to devote particular attention to this problem?

We had in our team the authors of the only scientific papers on the subject of food waste to date. This constellation gave rise to our first project: the foodwaste.ch platform. More and more it became clear that this topic is much more than just a waste problem. That is why we decided to find approaches with Foodways to work much more broadly on the sustainability of the sector and on the consumption behaviour of the population.

Tell us briefly to what extent food waste is unavoidable, and at what point the experts speak of waste - "food waste"!

By definition, food waste comes from food produced for humans that is never consumed in an unconventional form. There will always be a certain amount of it, be it from production errors in a manufacturing process or because the kids at home tip the plate onto the floor. But waste and loss should be kept to a minimum so as not to waste scarce natural resources unnecessarily. And the high numbers show that there is potential.

Can you shed some light on how food waste manifests itself today with some numbers?

The most recent estimates for Switzerland assume that around 2 million tonnes of food waste are produced each year from field to fork. Around half of this comes from the food industry (agriculture to retail), and the other half occurs at the consumption level. Our private rubbish sacks are therefore full of goodies. A survey by the FOEN confirms that around 30 percent of household rubbish is organic. And half of this is perfectly edible food. One explanation for this is surely that the average expenditure on food only accounts for around 6 per cent of household income, so what is thrown away is of no consequence. Food is responsible for about 30 percent of all the environmental impact of our personal consumption.

These are figures from Switzerland. How does it look in other countries?

Roughly speaking, it can be said that Western countries with comparable value chains and wealth ratios have roughly the same waste rates. Of course, there are differences in individual areas. Developing and emerging countries also have similarly high waste rates - but in a completely different structure. In these countries - relatively speaking - much more is lost in the value chain, for example due to a lack of cold chains or storage technologies. But at the consumption stage, virtually nothing is disposed of. In this context, it is important that these countries, in the course of growth, do not develop a wasteful culture similar to the one that prevails here.

Back to Switzerland: From which sectors in the food chain do the biggest contributors to food waste come?

Every company has its own challenges. Rejects can be seasonal, one-off or recurring, or structural. You therefore have to approach these cases individually accordingly. In my opinion, one of the greatest potentials lies in the cooperation between suppliers and customers. Often, established rules in cooperation are the cause of whether a product makes it onto the shelves or not. This is where innovation and open minds are needed to initiate change. This also applies to certain legal frameworks or trade practices. And here are two more empirical values from practice: around 13 percent cannot be marketed as food directly from agriculture, and around 30 percent are losses in processing. According to its own figures, the trade shines with very low reject rates.

Professionals like you and the media bring us closer to the problem. What is the practice doing about it?

No one - neither a commercial baker nor a large trading company - wants to dispose of their own goods. There are more and more innovative examples in the industry of how to get to the root of the problem. The industry initiative "United Against Waste", for example, has initiated advisory services and further training for commercial restaurateurs and bakers. The federal offices are currently examining whether an information campaign could make consumer culture more sustainable. And then there is a lot of innovation from the niche: the chef from "Mein Küchenchef ", for example, makes gourmet ready meals from agricultural surpluses directly for private consumption. The "Äss-Bar" sells bread "fresh from yesterday" and the American start-up "LeanPath" offers software to collect and reduce waste in catering businesses.

Can we as a society be satisfied with this, or do we need more - for example, greater public awareness of the issue?

Our waste is a mirror of consumer behaviour. And this clearly shows that there is enormous potential here. Raising awareness is certainly important here, because surveys show that the majority of the population think they throw away almost nothing themselves, while others are very wasteful. You have to be able to change this attitude so that everyone starts with their own private consumption.

How could food waste be framed as part of a corporate sustainability strategy?

In principle, a distinction must be made in any corporate sustainability strategy between measures towards employees as private individuals and those in business operations. Internally, every company (also non-food) can initiate a lot. In the core business, it is important firstly to further optimise one's own processes and secondly to discuss the topic in depth with customers and suppliers. In dialogue, common potentials can be identified and tackled. It usually pays to think outside the box. I always advise being a little visionary: Sustainability measures are always just a start. The real goal is the sustainable business model.

What is your prediction: Where will we be in 5 years' time with regard to the problem of food waste?

The food sector is still largely dominated by SMEs, and these issues are taken seriously there. Larger companies have good forward thinkers who also see the social benefits of waste reduction. In this combination, I am confident that a lot is possible in the future. I see a lot of people in our younger generation in particular who have this mindset. In this respect, I am optimistic that something will get moving.