Reflections on the EcoBite Summit: Sustainable Food Future
Last week, the EcoBite Summit brought together industry leaders, innovators, and sustainability enthusiasts at an event hosted by Tastebuds Collective and NAAME, whilst sponsored by Connected Innovation.
This collaborative gathering spotlighted urgent issues in food sustainability, underlined by a powerful reminder from one of our guest speakers, CAMVAC: “One-third of all food produced globally is lost or wasted.”
The summit highlighted solutions aimed at tackling this critical challenge, with insights from Food Safety Research Network, CAMVAC, Muntons, and Mechapres. Here’s a snapshot of the engaging discussions and ground-breaking ideas shared.
Providing your sustainable options in packaging
Food production in 2023 was 2.5 billion tonnes. Nearly one-third of all food produced globally each year is lost or wasted, enough to feed more than twice the number of people that go to bed hungry every night.
Gary discussed that when food is lost or wasted, all of the natural resources and energy that went into producing, processing, transporting and distributing it are also wasted.
Did you know, packaging accounts for about 10% of this energy, but it can play a crucial role in ensuring the other 90% is not wasted?
Currently, CAMVAC are doing the below to aid this challenge:
- Purchasing locally
- Returning mono-raw materials to suppliers for recycling
- Returning packaging to suppliers for reuse
- Producing thermal laminates to replace solvent-based adhesive laminates
- Producing mono-material laminates for recycling
- Providing barrier solutions on bio-based films for home composting
- Waste reduction programme
- Smart meters on all machines to reduce energy consumption
CAMVAC, a specialist in sustainable packaging, emphasised the importance of balancing sustainability with functionality. Their advanced materials are designed not only to reduce waste but also to align with global efforts to minimise environmental footprints.
Excellence in innovation through expertise and collaboration
Muntons started back in 1921 and are now an established leading supplier of malt and malted ingredients, providing the magic inside the very best global food and drink brands.
Their three key divisions include:
- Malted ingredients – found in recipes for bakery, confectionery, cereals, snacks, desserts, sauces, ready meals, meats etc.
- Brewing and distilling – with 100 years of experience in the brewing trade they have a passion for malt, driven by quality, innovation and sustainability
- Homebrew – they are a leading global manufacturer of homebrew kits and ingredients
Malt can be used to achieve: texture, flavour, colour and more in food and drink.
Muntons are open to collaborations, and have the following available:
- Test kitchen
- Application kitchen
- Microbrewery
- Sensory suite
- Meeting facilities
- Photography facility
Their innovation mindset isn’t just restricted to their ingredients. Their malt is 100% sustainable and they have a target to be net-zero by 2030.
Did you know, Muntons creates Maltichoc, which is the ideal solution to replace up to 50% of your cocoa formulations? This is excellent, as sadly the cocoa market is facing increased prices and demands with the price of cocoa powder up by 334% in the past 52 weeks.
Collaboratively making foods safer: ‘If it’s not safe, it’s not food’
What are the benefits of food safety?
- Keeps foodborne illnesses away
- Sustains life and enables healthy diets
- Helps safely produce and prepare food
- Facilitates trade and access to new markets
- Reduces food loss and waste
The network is a community that connects partners between food industry, academia and government to consider and apply science to improve the safety of foods in the UK. They are looking to address microbial risk in the food chain, with the goal of introducing new capability, knowledge or skills to help reduce these risks.
Their current four priorities are:
- Known pathogens – reducing the microbial risk of known pathogens
- Novel and emerging – understanding and navigating risk in the novel and unknown
- Applying knowledge – applying food safety knowledge and technology to traditional practices to reduce risk
- Safety at home – understanding and navigating risk in food storage, preparation and consumption at home
Cost-savings from heat recovery and heat pumps in food manufacturing
Mechapres are the future of industrial decarbonisation. It is affordable and easy to integrate heat pumping and waste heat recovery solutions for steam generation.
Attendees learned that there are large cost-saving opportunities by saving waste, in particular, steam.
Mechapres are currently involved in trials for coupling with solar thermal for pasteurisation and a retrofit of steam dryers.
Some may ask, why is it unique?
Their design system is patented
Thermal storage
High-temperature heat pump compressor
Mechapres are searching for more pilot schemes with food and drink businesses, to identify how they can save your business funds, but saving waste. Let us know if you’d like to know more information.
A call to action
The EcoBite Summit left attendees inspired and armed with actionable insights to drive meaningful change. From improving packaging sustainability to embracing innovative research and engineering, the event was a powerful reminder of the collective responsibility required to tackle global food waste.
Tastebuds Collective and NAAME created a space for meaningful dialogue, collaboration, and innovation. As we move forward, the lessons from EcoBite remind us that the fight against food waste is a shared journey—one that combines science, industry, and individual action.
Together, we can turn statistics like CAMVAC’s sobering figure into motivation for a brighter, more sustainable future.