MIDAS TOUCH
HOW SCIENTISTS ARE TURNING FOOD WASTE INTO ALL MANNER OF THINGS
THEY are Welsh scientists with the Midas touch – turning food waste into everything from glues to veggie burgers and anti-ageing products.
All unused leftovers from fruit, vegetable and grain crops are fair game – with the results destined for the food, building and beauty sectors.
Long term the goal of the Bangor University team is to prevent millions of tons of food waste being dumped in landfill or left to rot in the fields.
Its scientists are developing new “biorefining” techniques to find add value to unused residues from rapeseed, orange, tomato and olive crops.
Team member Dr Adam Charlton, from the university’s Biocomposites Centre, likens their work to the development of the oil industry.
“Bio-refining is refining,” he said.
“You start with a raw material and at the end of the process you have all sorts of products.”
The team has been awarded £400,000 from the Horizon 2020 innovation programme to contribute to the EU’s three-year ProEnrich project.
For this it is collaborating with private sector partners from six different EU countries, including food giants Mars and Tate & Lyle.
Bangor’s researchers are working to find new uses for rapeseed cake produced in northern Europe and olive-mill residues in southern Europe.
Tomato and citrus residues are also under the microscope.
Currently some me processing leftovers s are used as animal mal feed or for anaerrobic energy pro- duction.
But, according to Dr Charlton, large volumes – between a third and a quarter – are e simply thrown wn away.
“There is a real focus now on food od waste, from that thrown away by consumers in the home to unused residue at the farm, factory,” he said.
“We want to develop functional proteins that are plant-based for environmental reasons.”
Across Europe team members are exploring the use of plant proteins, polyphenols, dietary fibres and pigments.
Already Bangor has helped develop a protein concentrate from bio-refined rapeseed waste for use as pet food, in veggie a field and bit like oil burgers and in adhesive for plywood.
They have also helped find uses for olive waste in skin care. And by developing a method for separating out tomato seeds, it may lead to new anti-ageing and sunscreen products.
By cutting down on food waste, a corollary should be a reduction in the energy used in food production processes. They aim also to slash use of artificial chemicals, using naturally occurring enzymes instead.
The work is promising but, as with so many disruptive technologies, hampered by a shortage of commercial bio refineries.
“Technically it’s very challenging, particularly when it comes to scaling the processes up to commercial levels,” said Dr Charlton. “It’s what we’re trying to do here on Anglesey because the processes have to be economically viable.”