MAKING GOOD GRUB
Food waste gets new life in B.C.
VANCOUVER It sounds almost too good to be true.
A Langley, B.C., company has found a way to turn food waste — mostly stale-dated fruits and vegetables collected from grocery stores and food-processing discards — into a natural protein source for animals and plants.
It’s essentially upcycling food into food, Enterra Feed founder Brad Marchant says.
“It’s great for the planet,” Marchant said.
He took the magic out of the process by explaining the company is essentially mimicking nature by using insects — black soldier fly larvae, to be exact — to eat the discarded produce.
About 20 days into their lifespan, the fly larvae are harvested, washed, cooked and used to create protein and oil products, which are then used in sustainable feed for farmed fish, chickens and pets.
“It’s a very natural thing for fish and chickens to eat,” Marchant said.
The Langley facility, which is accepting 100 tonnes of food discards daily, is the first of its kind.
Of the 100 tonnes, about 20 tonnes of it is dry waste; the rest is water. That 20 tonnes is consumed by the larvae, which when cooked become about seven tonnes of protein.
They also produce about eight tonnes of waste, which is collected and used as a high-quality plant fertilizer.
If you do that math, that means Enterra is recovering about 70 per cent of the food waste and turning it back into food for animals and plants.
Only about one per cent of the larvae are allowed to mature into flies, which are used as breeding stock, laying about 700 to 800 eggs each.
The flies are native to B.C. in the summer but prefer the warm conditions in the Enterra facility to the outdoors.
The idea for the unique venture came after Marchant had a conversation with David Suzuki on a rafting trip the two took in 2007.
They were talking about fish farming and the unsustainable practice of feeding the captive fish ground anchovies caught in Peru.
Marchant now has plans to expand the Langley facility’s capacity to 54,000 tonnes next year.
He also hopes to partner with similar ventures in the United States and Europe.
“It’s all part of a circular economy,” he said. “It makes so much sense.”