Climbing the food waste ladder
We all play a part in the battle against food waste. For Lantmännen Unibake, the ambition is to keep surplus bakery products high up in the hierarchy for food waste so they can be used for what they were intended for – human consumption.
Reducing food waste is not only a top priority for Lantmännen Unibake but also high on the political agenda in the European Union. The EU’s Waste Framework Directive requires Member States to reduce waste at each stage of the supply chain, monitor waste levels, and report progress. Additionally, the new European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) requires companies to report waste levels yearly.
The EU has shared a waste hierarchy as a means of making the fight against waste more operational. This hierarchy establishes an order of preference for managing and disposing of waste. Lantmännen Unibake has created a pyramid based on these preferences to drive its food waste agenda, ranging from “the most preferable option” at the top and “the least preferable option” at the bottom.
Prevention first
As a large food manufacturer, Lantmännen Unibake is responsible for cutting down on food waste and contributing to the green agenda. Maria Nelving is Global Sustainability Manager at Lantmännen Unibake. She says that the best thing Lantmännen Unibake can do to reduce food waste is to prevent it from happening (read more about that here).
“That means constantly focusing on our maintenance strategy, continuous improvement projects, and closer customer collaboration. And while we continue to minimize our food waste levels, we ensure we have the right plans for knowing what to do with our food waste when it is generated at our bakeries.”
The second most preferable thing to do with food waste is to find ways to reuse the bakery products.
“By our terms, reusing a bakery product means any operation by which products and components that are not waste are used again for the same purpose for which they were conceived. Examples of reusable activities are product donations and repacking. However, an even more preferred option, which we invest more time and money into nowadays, is the ability to upcycle bread,” Maria Nelving explains.
Breadcrumbs, biorefineries, and landfill
Moving down in the waste hierarchy for food waste, recycling bakery products means any recovery operation by which waste materials are reprocessed into products, materials, or substances, whether for the original or other purposes.
“Examples of recycling are turning our waste into breadcrumbs or taking it through the process of extraction of sugars and/or proteins,” Maria Nelving says.
Going further down the food waste pyramid, recovery of bakery products means any operation where waste serves a useful purpose, while not being for human consumption. This means sending food-grade waste to biorefineries or using waste for animal feed.
At the bottom of the pyramid, food waste can be used for incineration with energy recovery. And finally, when all options are exhausted, food waste can be sent to landfill without any environmental benefits – thankfully, this is less than 1% of Lantmännen Unibake’s waste.
Baking with slurries
Lantmännen Unibake’s overarching ambition in reducing food waste is to climb the ladder in the food waste pyramid.
“Even though it is better to use surplus bakery products for creating energy, for example, compared to just throwing it out, we want our excess bakery products to still be used as human food,” Maria Nelving says.
One of many initiatives Lantmännen Unibake is currently working on to keep bakery waste products in the food life cycle, is to upcycle surplus bread material and finished bread. That means that you can use dough or baked products, make them into a slurry (imagine a porridge-like substance), and put it back into a dough for a product with a similar recipe. For example, a portion of excess rye bread can be used to bake another type of rye bread.
“There is a lot of innovation going on to keep our food waste as high up in the food waste hierarchy as possible. The tricky part is to build a strong business case, so handling food waste and upcycling our bread doesn’t become costly. If we succeed, we will live up to our responsibility as food manufacturers to reduce food waste and save valuable resources in production,” Maria Nelving ends.
