Content
Authors: Alexandra Grygorczyk, PhD and Amy Blake, MSc
1. Introduction
Approximately one-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption is wasted. Among these, fruits and vegetables have the highest wastage rates with 40 to 50 per cent of products produced being thrown away (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, 2010).
In Canada, approximately 74 per cent of produce waste occurs before it reaches consumers. This totals nearly six million metric tonnes (13,227 million pounds) of fruit and vegetable waste before reaching the consumer (Gooch et al., 2019). Two-thirds of this produce waste is categorized as avoidable waste occurring due to operational or market factors such as a breakdown in seller-buyer relationships, an oversupply or excess food not donated due to a vendor agreement. These massive amounts of wasted, potentially edible products could be reduced or eliminated by improving efficiencies or policies in the value chain. Meanwhile, the other third of fruit and vegetable waste occurring from farm to retail, is planned or unavoidable food waste. It is estimated that these unavoidable waste streams generate nearly two million metric tonnes of waste (Gooch et al., 2019) and include inevitable losses as they are by-products of processing such as the removal of husks, peels and cores.
These by-product streams from unavoidable food waste pose a problem for producers and processors, many of whom must pay to dispose of this waste at landfills or allow the by-products to decompose on unused plots of land. Besides the economic factor, the increasing focus on environmental sustainability in many organizations as well as in changing local regulations are driving an interest to find new solutions to managing by-product streams.
Many of these fruit and vegetable by-products are edible and contain valuable nutritional and functional components. The by-product streams are continuously and predictably generated in large volumes, a feature that makes them attractive for further processing to value-added products.
The idea of converting fruit and vegetable by-product streams to value-added products is not new and there are many examples of such endeavours such as selling dried grape skins from wine production as a source of flavonoids (e.g. Bioflavia™) or converting spent grains into cookies, granola and flours (e.g. Still Good). However, these efforts were often approached based on chance awareness or accessibility of the by-product stream rather than a strategic evaluation of all available by-product streams and targeted selection. Although such efforts are individually important for landfill diversion and for increased profitability of the horticulture value chain, a greater impact could be achieved if the Canadian agriculture and food industries have access to more information regarding by-product stream availability.
The lack of publicly available information on current sources of unavoidable horticultural waste in Canada is a barrier to tackling this problem. A systematic evaluation of the sources of underutilized by-product streams was identified as a gap on the path to determine the areas with the greatest need and opportunity. Thus, the current repor t will focus on unavoidable waste streams and identify the major sources of underutilized by-product streams occurring at different points in the Canadian horticulture value chain. These waste streams will then be described according to their nutritional and functional components and potential approaches for waste management or conversion to value-added products.
The report is intended to enable the horticulture sector, government and research organizations to tackle this issue more strategically by investing time, effort and money in the areas with greatest needs and opportunities for by-product stream utilization.