Even though world hunger is on the rise, a third of all food produced in the European Union (EU) is wasted, even if it is of perfect quality. The European ZeroW (Systemic Innovations Towards a Zero Food Waste Supply Chain) project, funded by the European Horizon 2020 program in the call for proposals for the European Green Deal, has just begun tackling the challenge of stopping and turning this reality around.
The project, led by Inlecom Commercial Pathways, has a budget of €12 million and involves 46 partners from 17 European countries. CTA (Corporación Tecnológica de Andalucía), IFAPA, Grupo La Caña, and Multiscan Technologies are the project's Andalusian partners.
The objective of ZeroW is to contribute significantly to the prevention and reduction of food waste and to improve the sustainability of food supply chains.
ZeroW partners will demonstrate various innovations across nine food chains, employing a systemic innovation method to effectively address the problem of food waste (Sistemic Innovation Living Labs, SILL). Living labs are open and user-centric innovation ecosystems that integrate research, innovation, and co-creation processes in communities and real-life environments. Each living lab will address specific issues and propose data-driven solutions to ensure future sustainability and scaling-up of the innovations developed.
The living labs focus on different stages of the value chain and involve farmers, food producers, processing industries, retailers, research centers, Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs), and clusters, among others. Furthermore, ZeroW will demonstrate how scaling up the results of the innovations demonstrated and combining them with appropriate policies can bring us closer to the food waste reduction targets of the European Green Deal by 2030.
An Andalusian Living Lab
The objective of the Andalusian living lab will be to identify, evaluate, and guarantee the quality and useful life of food so that the strategies to add value to the foods that are considered 'ugly' by retailers have a real impact on consumers.
Grupo La Caña, an agri-food production company that is a member of CTA, together with the technology supplier Multiscan, will carry out demonstration activities in production. Activities will focus on the development of a process for the identification and classification of products according to their taste, shape, color, appearance, and origin (eco/non-ECO). They will also be able to evaluate their useful life by non-destructive analysis of the batch composition. Such a procedure could be applied to a single fruit/vegetable or to a whole lot. This will allow producers and retailers to reduce waste.