Bricks you can eat
STAMPING out food waste while preventing hunger is the target of an innovative Bendigo businessman.
For years, Fred Coulter has been dehydrating waste orange peel from juicing factories to create powder for the health food market, and recently started using the technology to dehydrate surplus or supermarket reject fresh produce to create food “blocks”.
“Once you add water to these blocks, they expand to three or four times the size, and they don’t go off, so they can be stored forever,” Mr Coulter said.
“The vegetable ones can be rehydrated for soup and the fruit blocks can be eaten in a block or also rehydrated.
“You’re killing two birds with one stone – managing food waste and solving the problem of starvation.”
He said any fruit or vegetable could be processed into a dehydrated block.
He envisages companies such as his buying waste, byproducts or surplus products from farmers, compressing them into nutrient-dense blocks then using them for stock and soup in homeless shelters, or food aid overseas.
“It would be great for a lot
of people in Australia who can’t afford to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, help during natural disasters when fresh food can’t be stored and when military troops are deployed,” Mr Coulter said.
He has spent more than $1 million developing his dehydrating system, and recently produced a large block of banana as part of his trials.
“They reckon 100,000 to 120,000 tonnes of bananas are wasted in Australia every year, and that can be
converted to 15,000 to 20,000 when dried,” he said.
University of Canberra food waste specialist Bethaney Turner said the problem of food waste was one of distribution.
“We have enough food to feed everyone, it just doesn’t get to where it needs to go,” Dr Turner said.
❝ You’re killing two birds with one stone – managing food waste and solving the problem of starvation. — Fred Coulter