A British non-profit company is planning to use unused food to offer catering and meal services to people, businesses and organizations, beginning in September. Real Junk Food Manchester’s program will focus on commercial outside catering services such as buffets and hot meals. The venture will be housed in a large commercial kitchen in partnership with a local social housing provider and will collaborate with local charity and public-sector groups to supply meals to vulnerable people across the city. RJFM opened its first waste food pay-as-you-feel restaurant concept last year as a short-term pop-up concept and doubled in size. [Image Credit: © Real Junk Food Manchester]

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, tomato food waste costs American households $2.3 billion annually. But California-based food technology company Arcadia Biosciences and hybrid seed developer Shriram Bioseed may have come up with a solution. They announced development of extended shelf life (ESL) tomatoes with improved yield and fruit quality. The new hybrids are in the pre-commercial, wide-area field testing stage with anticipated launch in 2019. Arcadia used a non-GM advanced screening and breeding technique called TILLING to screen genetic variations that allow tomatoes to fully ripen on the vine yet remain durable enough to survive the packing and shipping process.

Supermarket company Morrisons has started a deposit return schemes by placing vending machines for plastic bottles at its stores in North Yorkshire and Scotland. Part of the company’s efforts to promote recycling of plastics, the program will reward shoppers for every plastic bottle they return with coupon for 100 Morrisons More points or let customers donate 10p to charity organization CLIC Sargent, which helps children and young people who have cancer.[Image Credit: © Morrisons Ltd]

Several companies have announced their plans to stop using plastic straws, while a number of towns and cities have revealed proposals to ban single-use plastics and fine firms and organizations that will not comply. Starbucks said it plans to remove all plastic straws from its stores by 2020 and replace them with recyclable plastic lids for cold beverages. Starting September 1, 2018, plastic straws would only be available by request at its hotels, Hyatt said. For its part, Hilton Hotels said it plans to remove plastic straws from 650 locations in 2018.[Image Credit: © PublicDomainPictures]

Liquor brand Bacardi has joined nonprofit group Lonely Whale to stop the use of 1 billion single-use plastic straws by 2020. As part of the company’s efforts to help protect the environment, Bacardi has committed to review its global supply chain to remove non-essential and non-recyclable single-use plastic waste. Also, the company will encourage consumers to join its #TheFutureDoesntSuck campaign.[Image Credit: © Lonely Whale]

Coffeeshop chain Starbucks has started charging customers 5p for single-use paper coffee cups in the UK. Part of the company’s efforts to reduce the use of 2.5 billion disposable cups each year, the “latte levy” was rolled out nationwide after a three-month trial in London. Customers who use reusable mugs receive a 25p discount off any Starbucks drink, while in-store customers encouraged to use ceramic cups instead.[Image Credit: © Starbucks Corporation]

Specialty Breads, a company that supplies frozen bread and dough to restaurants, hotels, pubs, cafés and caterers, has announced its plan to reduce by 50 percent its use of single-use plastics by 2020. Also, the company said it aims to use recyclable or recycled packaging, use solar cooling to enhance efficiency of refrigerators, provide sales staff with low emission or hybrid cars, and achieve zero-landfill status for its bakery operations.[Image Credit: © Specialty Breads Ltd]

Hospitality company Hyatt has announced that it will remove single-use plastics, including plastic straws and drink picks, from its hotels worldwide. Part of the company’s efforts to help protect the ocean, the move will see the company providing straws and picks on request only. Also, the company said environment-friendly alternatives will be provided where available. Hyatt’s move follows coffeeshop chain Starbucks’ earlier announcement of its plan to become straw-free by 2020.[Image Credit: © Pete H]

Coffeeshop chain Starbucks has announced plans to stop using plastic straws at its more than 28,000 locations worldwide by 2020. Part of the company’s efforts to reduce waste and protect the environment, the move will also see Starbucks replacing plastic straws with the recyclable lid developed by Emily Alexander, an engineer at the chain’s Global Research and Development. At present, the recyclable lids are used for some drinks, including Draft Nitro and Cold Foam in more than 8,000 locations in the US and Canada. These lids will be used for all iced drinks, the company said, except Frappuccino, which will have a straw made from paper or compostable plastic made from fermented plant starch or other environment-friendly material.[Image Credit: © Starbucks Corporation]

Food co-op PCC Community Markets has promised to stop using plastics in its delis by 2022. At present, the company uses more than 5 million plastic packaging containers every year. According to PCC, it plans to replace plastic packaging with biodegradable compostable containers. In 2015, the company replaced plastic straws and utensils with compostable alternatives. [Image Credit: © Puget Consumers Co-op]

Nada, a new retailer in Vancouver, British Columbia, has started selling food products without packaging. Aimed at reducing plastic pollution, the move encourages customers to bring their own clean containers and bags for the food items they buy from the store. Customers can pay for bulk items by weight, while a dishwasher-safe tag will keep a record of the empty container, making the process faster the next time they shop. Nada sells package-free dry food items, bakery products, and toiletries and cleaning supplies. [Image Credit: © Nada]

Multinational corporations, including Amazon and H&M, are reportedly urging the state of Maharashtra in India to relax its recently approved ban on single-use plastic. Coming after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign for an end to the use of single-use plastic in the country by 2022, the state’s move is expected to raise operating costs for companies. Retailers and beverage manufactures are among companies that use plastic packaging. Business groups, including the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, have called on the government to soften its anti-plastic policies.[Image Credit: © Hans Braxmeier]

A recent podcast sponsored by the American Farm Bureau Federation presented ideas for recycling inedible products from dairy farms. One farmer in Pennsylvania, for example, who is participating in the No Taste for Waste campaign uses an anaerobic digester – the original purpose was to reduce odor –  to recycle food waste into enough electric power and methane to supply the farm and roughly 100 other homes. It’s a better way to deal with waste than sending it to a landfill. But another solution is to, whenever possible, channel surplus food “to those that are less fortunate” and to animal feed processors. [Image Credit: © Univ. of Minnesota Extension]

Anuj Rakyan, founder and managing director of Rakyan Beverages, producer of India’s RAW Pressery juices, is a strong believer in the “sustainable lifestyle” and “ecological karma” and wants his brand to reflect these guiding principles. Rakyan’s three-part plan to achieve a sustainable lifestyle begins with the use of solar power in a new plant in Panvel (near Mumbai). The second leg is to put the waste material – seeds, stems, and pulp – to good use on farms and at animal shelters creating secondary raw material like manure or fodder. The third leg is trickier, because there really is no alternative to using BPA plastic bottles, an environmental hazard, as packaging because his juices are pressurized. The answer for Rakyan was to create Rawcycle, an initiative to increase awareness about plastic pollution and to offer incentives to recycle PET bottles.

A technology that allows distribution – but not copying – of digital information, blockchain was originally devised for the digital currency Bitcoin. Now a food waste management company in the Atlanta, Ga., area is using a blockchain-based app to connect businesses with local charities to ease deliveries of leftover food. The idea behind the Goodr app is to reduce food waste by providing data about what types of surplus food app users are producing. The Goodr app keeps a data ledger for clients showing how much food is wasted, and where they might be losing money. Data indicate what food gets wasted the most, what the community connections are, and how the environment is affected. Goodr hopes to expand to Seattle, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Miami, Dallas, Houston and San Francisco by the end of 2019.