Our grandmothers did it really well: Taking leftover foods and turning them into something else. Scraps of vegetables and animal bones made stock; leftover bread turned into bread pudding; croutons became breadcrumbs.
What’s old is new again and companies are following grandma’s lead. And now it’s got a new fancy name: Upcycling. Upcycling means taking food that would otherwise be wasted and turning it into something new. It also means, hopefully, that the 1.3 billion tons of food that is wasted every year, according to the Food & Agriculture Association, will be reduced.
America’s upcycled industry was estimated at $ 46.7 billion in 2019, according to the Financial Times and by this year, more than 160 products from 37 companies are Upcycled Certified by the Upcycled Food Association (UFA), Greenwood Village, Colo.
Upcycling is gaining traction, especially with the environmentally minded, but even big companies are getting in on the action. Anheuser Busch is building two facilities, in the U.S. and Belgium, to process barley, which would otherwise be discarded or fed to cattle, to sell to companies like Nestle.
The greatest solution
Upcycling means doing more with less and protecting the planet at the same time. According to Project …