On the table and not in the bin

The power of every act

The Es­pigo­ladors Foun­da­tion is a pi­o­neer­ing local or­gan­i­sa­tion that has re­cov­ered - and dig­ni­fied - an ac­tiv­ity with cen­turies of his­tory: es­pigo­la­ment or what was once re­ferred to as “glean­ing” in Eng­lish. This prac­tice con­sists in reach­ing an agree­ment with the farmer to col­lect the fruits and veg­eta­bles that are dis­carded from the com­mer­cial cir­cuit due to sur­plus pro­duc­tion, de­cline in sales or aes­thetic is­sues. The foun­da­tion chan­nels them to so­cial or­gan­i­sa­tions and also makes jams, com­potes, sauces and veg­etable pâtés via its Es im-per­fect brand, founded in 2015, which pro­vides em­ploy­ment for vul­ner­a­ble groups. The Es­pigo­ladors has al­ready re­cov­ered more than 2,200 tonnes of food and has just pre­sented a study that quan­ti­fies the losses of fruit and veg­eta­bles in the pri­mary sec­tor, while look­ing for the causes to al­le­vi­ate “the lack of in-depth analy­sis of this prob­lem at the Cata­lan and state level” and offer a pro­to­col that can be eas­ily repli­cated. De­spite point­ing out that “the re­sults show the com­plex­ity of the prob­lem and that it has mul­ti­ple causes”, the analy­sis makes it clear that one of the main rea­sons for the losses in the pri­mary sec­tor is the fact that the fruits and veg­eta­bles do not meet the aes­thetic re­quire­ments of the cus­tomer or the mar­ket. Ap­ples that are too small, pota­toes that are too big, peaches that are a bit mushy, plums with scars... such foods do not look ap­peal­ing and the vast ma­jor­ity of con­sumers do not want them - and there­fore nei­ther does the point of sale - no mat­ter how good they might be.

As Raquel Díaz, di­rec­tor of the Es­pigo­ladors Foun­da­tion and co-au­thor of the study, re­flects, “we all think we don’t throw away food, but we must be aware that our acts of con­sump­tion have an im­pact on losses and waste in other parts of the agri-food sys­tem, whether local farm­ers, the neigh­bour­hood store or far-off pro­duc­ers due to the glob­alised sys­tem”. “Only the pret­ti­est cau­li­flow­ers, the per­fect ones, the ones that match the pack­ag­ing are sold... We don’t talk enough, then, about how our food de­ci­sions are con­tribut­ing to a lot of loss and waste.”

The foun­da­tion has for many years held work­shops to raise pub­lic aware­ness, but now it is also fo­cus­ing its ef­forts on train­ing train­ers “to make a dif­fer­ence”. “If you ad­dress groups such as young peo­ple, mon­i­tors and teach­ers, you can delve deeper into the com­plex­ity of the prob­lem and they can be­come agents of change,” ex­plains Díaz. The main mes­sage she would like to see is that waste must be worked on struc­turally be­cause it is “one of the key as­pects in the un­sus­tain­abil­ity of the cur­rent agri-food sys­tem”, and that peo­ple’s right to food must be guar­an­teed through their em­pow­er­ment. The foun­da­tion there­fore chan­nels sur­plus fruit and veg­eta­bles from the coun­try­side to so­cial en­ti­ties, but it also has sev­eral trans­for­ma­tive pro­jects un­der­way, such as La Botiga del Prat de Llo­bre­gat, where users of so­cial ser­vices do not re­ceive a sealed pack­age of food, but can choose which ones they take away through a points sys­tem. “The food guar­an­tee pro­jects,” the di­rec­tor of the Es­pigo­ladors Foun­da­tion says, “should not de­pend on the sur­pluses of the sys­tem, but have re­sources to be able to make food pur­chases with sus­tain­abil­ity and health cri­te­ria and adapt­ing to the needs of each per­son.”

The restau­ra­teur Ada Par­el­lada is a pi­o­neer in Cat­alo­nia not only in terms of cui­sine, but in the fight against waste. She is be­hind the ini­tia­tive of Gas­trore­cup din­ners, which are made up of dishes that demon­strate how “with a bit of skill you can make great dishes using food that was des­tined for the land­fill”. Six edi­tions have been held at her restau­rant, El Sem­pro­ni­ana in Barcelona, but for the first time and thanks to the im­pe­tus of the Cata­lan De­part­ment of Cli­mate Ac­tion, Food and Rural Agenda, the sev­enth edi­tion was held in other lo­ca­tions this year: La Cava de Tàrrega, Can Xapes de Cor­nellà del Terri and Al­bert Guzmán de la Ràpita. “The aim is that next year it will be repli­cated on the same day in all restau­rants in Cat­alo­nia that want to get in­volved,” Par­el­lada says. As she re­calls, when this pro­ject began “peo­ple would often ask if the food was bad for them, and now there is much more in­for­ma­tion and peace of mind, peo­ple have un­der­stood that there are many foods in per­fect con­di­tion that have been dis­carded for var­i­ous rea­sons, nor­mally com­mer­cial ones”. She makes it clear that in no case are we talk­ing about food in bad – or even ques­tion­able – con­di­tion, but that it’s just about “using com­mon sense”. “We’ve taken to read­ing the best be­fore date as if it were a no­tar­ial doc­u­ment, but we have to start trust­ing our senses again.”

Par­el­lada be­lieves that there was a mo­ment when it went “from eth­i­cal to aes­thetic cui­sine”, and even re­mem­bers an in­ter­na­tion­ally renowned chef at a con­gress say­ing that we had to learn to throw food away - and so that hap­pened in many restau­rants – al­though she be­lieves the dy­nam­ics are now chang­ing (es­pe­cially in restau­rants that are not part of a chain) “due to en­vi­ron­men­tal and so­cial, but also eco­nomic aware­ness, be­cause throw­ing away food is a clear symp­tom of poor busi­ness man­age­ment”. She and her team use tech­niques as sim­ple as check­ing the fridge every day and fol­low­ing the “first come, first served” rule, only bring­ing the bread in­cluded in the menu if the cus­tomer asks for it (they used to throw a lot of it away) and offer three plate sizes a la carte so that every­one can order what they know they’ll fin­ish.

Method­ol­ogy and staff

The Cata­lan law against food waste, ap­proved just be­fore lock­down but still to be im­ple­mented, es­tab­lishes that all com­pa­nies in the food chain must draw up a plan to pre­vent food losses and waste, a very im­por­tant change be­cause those that do not act of their own ac­cord will be forced into ac­tion. As Amèlia Sar­roca re­ports, a Food Waste Man­ager at CREDA (the Cen­tre for Re­search in Food Econ­omy and De­vel­op­ment at the Poly­tech­nic Uni­ver­sity of Cat­alo­nia or UPC), the first thing that needs to be in­sti­gated on an in­ter­na­tional scale is a spe­cific and ho­mo­ge­neous method­ol­ogy for quan­ti­fy­ing food waste and for there to be enough qual­i­fied per­son­nel to achieve this. Work is being done on both. “We’re try­ing to get stu­dents to get more and more in­volved in these top­ics, and even to make them Final De­gree and Mas­ter’s the­ses. Stu­dents are the ones who will have it in their hands to help com­pa­nies make a more sus­tain­able world, in ad­di­tion to show­ing them that they will also be more prof­itable this way.” For the method­ol­ogy, it is very im­por­tant to pub­li­cise ex­ist­ing good prac­tices and help com­pa­nies forge al­liances, which is why CREDA par­tic­i­pates in nu­mer­ous out­reach ini­tia­tives and par­tic­i­pa­tory work­shops. This year, the UPC has fo­cused on sus­tain­able food in the Re­cir­cula Chal­lenge, a com­pe­ti­tion in which sev­eral teams of stu­dents are posed a chal­lenge and the best so­lu­tions re­ceive an award. The fi­nal­ists in­clude a pro­posal for Aeye, a small de­vice that can be eas­ily at­tached to the fridge and, thanks to AI, de­tects what goes in and what comes out, there­fore pre­dict­ing what is about to ex­pire. In fact, Sar­roca points out, new tech­nolo­gies can help a lot in the war on waste, and there is al­ready soft­ware that helps restau­rants plan pur­chases bet­ter, al­though not every­one “wants it or knows how to use it” .

Ant or bear ra­tion?

The hunger traf­fic light is one of CREDA’s pro­pos­als to re­duce left­overs in school can­teens. It in­volves the can­teen mon­i­tors ex­plain­ing to the chil­dren the im­por­tance of not or­der­ing more than they will eat, so as not to throw any­thing away. The stu­dents can choose be­tween three plate sizes: an ant, fox or bear ra­tion. With the mea­sures that have been ap­plied in a pilot plan, four schools in Barcelona province have man­aged to re­duce waste by an av­er­age of 30%. Sar­roca re­calls that there are many in­ter­est­ing pro­jects un­der­way, even though the pan­demic has post­poned some of them and now “we must en­sure that they restart”.

One am­bi­tious ini­tia­tive that has not stopped in Cat­alo­nia but has con­tin­ued to take steps is Mer­cabarna’s work against waste, which has cul­mi­nated in this year’s in­au­gu­ra­tion of a pi­o­neer­ing food use cen­tre, called Food­back. This is a mar­ket space where a se­lec­tion of sur­plus fruit and veg­eta­bles is pro­vided by whole­salers to give them a sec­ond life. It is in­no­v­a­tive not only be­cause the re­cy­cling process has been made eas­ier and sort­ing has been made more pro­fes­sional, but be­cause it is try­ing to make the most of all the left­overs. Thus, once the non-mar­ketable food suit­able for human con­sump­tion is re­ceived, a se­lec­tion is made, and those that are in good con­di­tion are sent to so­cial en­ti­ties. Since the aim is not to waste any­thing, how­ever, a pilot test is being done with the Es­pigo­ladors Foun­da­tion to see whether the fruits and veg­eta­bles that have not passed the first fil­ter can still be used. The aim is, for ex­am­ple, that over­ripe fruit can be used to make a com­pote that can go to soup kitchens.

Cata­lan reg­u­la­tions fore­see sanc­tions for com­pa­nies that do not have pre­ven­tion plans, but the as­so­ci­a­tion of man­u­fac­tur­ers and dis­trib­u­tors AECOC is com­mit­ted to the path of com­pro­mise and re­calls that its as­so­ci­ates have worked vol­un­tar­ily on the ini­tia­tive L’al­i­mentació no té de­saprof­i­ta­ment since 2012, which has re­duced dis­carded food by more than 50%. David Es­teller is in charge of the pro­ject and notes that Ital­ian law, for ex­am­ple, re­wards com­pa­nies that do­nate prod­ucts to food banks.

Tech­no­log­i­cal in­no­va­tions also help. Too Good to Go is one mo­bile ap­pli­ca­tion aimed at giv­ing way what shops have not been able to sell. It of­fers sur­prise food pack­ages (de­pend­ing on the sur­plus of the day) with dis­counts of up to 70%. Some 3.2 mil­lion of such packs have al­ready been saved in Cat­alo­nia.