A third of all food is wasted
“Reducing food waste is one of the three most important things we can do to reverse global warming”
Chad Frischmann, Climate expert
Flavour is a European collaborative project involving 10 partners from Belgium, France and the United Kingdom, which is investigating new ways to
- fight food waste
- create job opportunities for the long-term unemployed
- help people in poverty
PROCESSING OR DISTRIBUTION (HOW?)
We can avoid food waste by producing, buying and valuing food in a new way. If surpluses remain, we can create job opportunities by
- distributing food surplus via platforms to food banks and social organisations
- processing food surplus into new, longer lasting products
SOCIAL VALUE (WHY?)
The distribution or processing of the food is carried out by employees within the social economy. These are often people who are struggling to find a job. By supporting them, FLAVOUR created a lot of social benefits.
Thanks to the calculations of VIVES Hogeschool and Marjon University, we learned that FLAVOUR created £87 million of social value in total.
Every pound invested in the initiatives yielded more than £9 of social return on investment.
VIVES Hogeschool and Plymouth Marjon University calculated this by using an existing method: the Social Value Engine, made by the Social Value Team in East Riding, Yorkshire. Thanks to the engine, one can calculate a monetary value to improvements on a social, human and environmental level.
Examples of these benefits are: increased employability for people with a distance to the labour market, increased self-confidence for employees and volunteers, reduced social isolation for community members, etc. The results are linked to UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). For more info, visit https://www.socialvalueengine.com/
CHALLENGES
Creating social jobs while fighting food waste isn’t always easy. We discussed these challenges during out event in June 2022 (video below).
The biggest challenges remain:
- Becoming financially stustainable while trying to meet social and environmental goals.
- The low costs for incinerating food surplus or turning it into cattle feed.
POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS
One way to make your social enterprise more resilient is by working together with other partners. If there is one thing we should remember from FLAVOUR, it would be that collaboration is key.
Click here for more information about business models for setting up or improving your surplus food organisation.
A second stimulus for social enterprises would be sound supporting policies. Based on the experiences of the FLAVOUR partners, Feedback Global published several policy recommendations for the UK, Belgium, France and the EU.
