Food waste in the supply chain

Speaker A: Foreign hello and welcome to the Sustainable Supply Chains podcast by Deloitte, the show that provides food for thoughts through exploration of innovative practices, new thought leadership and real world solutions in the supply chain driven sustainability area. I'm your host, Henrik Knack, Director of supply chain and network Operations in Deloitte Consulting. And I'm excited to embark on this journey. Together with you we have this very interesting podcast where we will be talking about food, uh, loss and waste in the diary industry, but can be translated to many other uh, uh, food and beverage industries. Uh, today I have with me, uh, two very, very interesting people. David, uh, Boulanger, uh, who is the EVP and COO at Arle Foods, and uh, Mia Hoi Bredol who is uh, head of supply chain, sustainable supply chain, uh, as director in Arle Foods as well, I guess. Mia, you are having David as your daily boss.

Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes, yes. So good being here together, having the chance to speak around this topic, of course a key topic for me, uh, having food waste and uh, and uh, sustainability in a podcast. Right. So glad to have the opportunity.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's, that's a good, good uh, point. Uh, maybe I could have both of you just to say a short few words about yourself before we get started.

Speaker C: Do you want to start Mia, or do you want me to start?

Speaker B: Yes. So, uh, my name is Mia. I'm heading up our supply chain sustainability team in Isla Foods. It's a team we created three years ago to really accelerate on our sustainability agenda in supply chain. So, so we've been working on it before but to really accelerate. I've been 13 years in Isla Foods in many different functions. Uh, but uh, yeah, coming into this role when it was created three years ago, have a background from business and supply chain and from all school of business. So that's sort of my background coming into it. Not sustainability, uh, but it learned a lot and knows a lot now by

Speaker A: having that and a very interesting area exploding quite a lot with new content. So we still need to learn everyone. Yeah, thank you so much. And David.

Speaker C: Yeah, David, uh, or David, uh, I'm French as you can hear. And uh, you can see my name, my name means a baker in French. So not that I am used to make bread, but uh, uh, I've been uh, working all my career in the food industry and in supply chain. I've been working for Mars, uh, Danone, most, the most important uh, period of my career. 20 years in Danone, a bit of Mondelez as well. But then four years ago I decided to join Arla Foods as the head of supply chain for Harla Foods. Uh, so see, this is the journey. I've been there for four years now and, um, working with Mia, uh, on sustainability, of course, but also on many other things in efficiency and growth for the ALA foods business.

Speaker A: Yeah, those things go hand in hand. You can never just pick out one and then optimize on that solely. It's a holistic game. That's why we love supply chain so much, I guess.

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker A: So I have a number of questions for you today. Um, where we dive into the food loss and waste area. And let's start from the top. Um, Arla Food is diary company that is grounded in nature and its products from nature. How would you describe all of food's approach to sustainable production and lucid logistics in this context?

Speaker C: I think it's important first when we talk about sustainability in Arla Food and also in the dairy industry, that it is at the core of everything we do. Um, because we all know, uh, in Arla that this is probably the biggest threat to our industry, but also the biggest opportunity if we manage to crack uh, um, the carbon footprint that the dairy industry has. So we take, we took, uh, when we did our strategy a, uh, few years ago when I joined arla, we had a full, uh, renewed strategy which we call future 26. Uh, and it was very uh, clear, although we were working on sustainability since the beginning, that we needed to put this at the core of our strategy, making, uh, it the first pillar of our strategy and we call it lead on sustainable dairy. And I think, uh, the important word is lead, uh, because we want to lead on many topics and I think we have demonstrated, uh, that we can lead on the farming, uh, area probably you've heard in Denmark, uh, all the activities we've done with our farmers and the incentive programs that we have put in place to support our farmers to decrease their carbon footprint on the milk, um, uh, but also to reward them when they do good things. So it's an incentive. So that's the good thing. Um, and of course, uh, that was super important in the light of the CO2 tax that uh, you've heard about or you're still discussing, I think in the authorities, but we do that at a European level. Um, then what does it mean for supply chain, for production and logistics? And it's exactly the same, although the carbon footprint is much lower in our scope one and two versus what we have at farm. It's only 5% of our total footprint. We also want to lead in this area because we want uh, uh, this is our direct responsibility as a company and we use this to inspire our farmers as well. So uh, uh, this is why we created mia's organization in order to accelerate uh, our ability to decrease our footprint mainly on carbon first in production and logistics. And on this area we want to, not only to do what everybody's doing, but also to experience new things and lead in new technologies so that we can be the most advanced in terms of carbon reduction. But this is not only about carbon. Think, uh, it's uh, good that Mia as a background, I mean you see it's uh, energy, water, food waste, uh, sustainability is a multi dimensional topic and we have to tackle as well in our supply chain all of these different topics and we want also to care for our water footprint. Um, and more specifically on the food waste that I know we're going to talk about.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly, yeah. Mia, uh, decarbonization I guess is really number one for Alephoods, right? On your strategic agenda, what you focus on, but also water reduction is quite important. Um, but I understand food waste and food loss and waste is a key priority in your agenda as well for sustainability. Why do you see the need to shape up the food waste strategy?

Speaker B: So back when, as David was alluded to, back when we launched the sustainability strategy, we were of course leaning very much towards the UN Sustainability development goals. And in that, uh, those of you that looked a little bit into food waste will know that there is this UN sustainability development goal called 12.3, which is saying we need to halve food waste per capita at 50% by 2030. We and Ada of course also wanted to commit to that. Um, we wanted to live up to not just as diodevide, zinc, carbon, but we wanted to live up to multiple elements of the sustainability development goals. Well this was one of them. So part of this strategy when we created back in time was food waste. The issue you can say back when we launched the sustainability strategy was that there was no global standard or definition. How do you measure food waste? How do you compare it with others? Uh, so what we did to start with was saying, okay, let's work on where we can start working on reducing it, where we can see it, where we know it is. Let's work on that. And now why did we revisit it here recently? The last year, also together with Deloitte west, we said, okay, now we see increasing pressure from regulatory bodies, but also from customers in actually also reporting on numbers, showing the numbers and showing it very visibly and There started to be now guidelines and standards, global standards available, making it possible for us to also go in and use the data we already have. So I think that was sort of why we said, okay, yes, we committed to it back then based on sustainability development goals. But now there starts to be guidelines and standards available so we can actually measure it, document it, and show our numbers also externally and not just work on the great initiatives that we could see. So I think that was part of it. Uh, I think another element is to mention here is that we're still early. So for those of you sitting and saying we need to start on food waste, it's still in the early phase. We are following the web guidelines. Um, uh, there's no EU guidelines yet or standards definition. Uh, but that's the one we are following as we believe that's the best available, ambitious, and guidelines set out globally so far. Um, and then another thing to mention into this content. I just need to say, when we talk food waste, is that often, at least me, when I'm talking food waste, I'm thinking of the products I'm throwing in my bin. I'm thinking of the milk that runs out of shelf life. But actually in our land, foods, when we talk our own operation and we talk supply chain and we talk logistics, it's actually a lot on these. You can call it thin water or water with a little bit of milk in. So some. Yeah. So you can, you can say it's. It's waste in a wastewater that, uh, that we, that we're talking and where most of the waste is, of course we need to reduce it.

Speaker C: Ah.

Speaker B: And we want to reduce it, but that's sort of, it's not things you can eat. Typically, at least it's minimal. The biggest part is this, um, waste in the wastewater that we, um, that goes into the drain and where we need to minimize that.

Speaker A: I think many people don't, don't have this understanding that they see milk floating into nature and being wasted. But this is not just what we're talking about. It's much more advanced than that. Let's look a bit more into your own part of the world. So scope one, one and two. What kind of things are you doing? What are the measures you're taking to reduce your food loss and wastes in your own operations from when you receive the milk and until you then produce and ship it out at the other end?

Speaker C: Do you want me to answer me.

Speaker B: That's good. You can do that.

Speaker C: Okay. Um, well, for us, milk is of course our Gold, raw material. Right. So we want to ensure that at every stage, uh, uh, in our supply chain every drop of milk counts. So there are lots of things we do to avoid that there is any drop of milk going in the drain or going down somewhere and so on. Um, so we do a lot of things in our supply chain in order to be sure that when first it starts at the farm that we collect 100% of the milk that the cow are producing. And it's obvious, but you know, even at the farm there is tanks, um, there is a lot of um, uh, um, assets at the farm there is the truck. So how we optimize the usage of these tanks and so on, how we clean them so that every time we, we clean them, we, we uh, we, we, we we don't you know, misuse part uh, of the milk that we uh, that we uh, that we produce. Trying uh, to identify all the leakages that we have because we have a lot of tubes and so on. So when there is a leakage and there is. So I'm talking about a lot of basic small things, but when you know, how many, how many pipes we have in our dairies, how many tanks we have in our dairies, I mean all those small things can add up to something uh, significant. Uh, and then we have uh, we have also uh, something which is super important for us in dairy, which is called cip. So it's a bit of a buzz. Strange word for those who don't know about cip. What does it mean? Uh, it means cleaning in place. What does it mean is in a dairy, uh, we are obsessed, uh, obviously by the cleanliness and the fact that when we produce after a certain number of hours, because milk is a raw material that has a very short shelf life that can be spoiled very quickly. So we ensure that regularly we clean all our pipes, all our tanks. And to do that, uh, uh, we can optimize a lot of things. Putting sensors, putting technology in order to ensure that we clean with at least the least water as possible, but also uh, losing uh, as less milk as possible. That's basically uh, all the activities. I don't know if you want to add something Mia, um, on all of the other things that we do to ensure that from the farm to our product there is not one single drop of milk that is not used. And of course this is an image because there are some percentage of the milk, as Mia said, that is going in the drain. But we want to reduce that as much as possible using as much new technologies as Possible.

Speaker B: I think key things that we've seen a step change uh on our side was real time sensors. So really installing these real time sensors. That's also what David is alluding to that we really on the spot in real time measure both to identify leakage but also to identify. Okay, is it okay now to go into uh, is it clean? Is there no more milk left? Is it now it goes into the drain or do we need is there still something we capture it again in a tank and the secure is being we used upcycled again. So I think these real time sensors is still something we are rolling out and we can get data in. You find out you need even more and it's an ongoing journey but it's a step change that starting to have that uh even more on a size these real time sensors and then small things like tipping the tank instead of having the tank on a milk truck straight having a little bit of a ah ankle on it against helping secure everything gets out. There's small things that we do and, and adjust on the, on the equipment.

Speaker A: And in a supply chain like yours you have a long number of steps. So every step counts. And if you can do a lot in each step I guess it adds up to quite a lot.

Speaker C: Really. Mhm.

Speaker A: Like in any other beverage industry when you shift from one product to another there's always a bit of waste. I uh, remember I once suggested a big beer uh producer that they could just take the in betweens and bottle that and maybe have a Carlsberg surprise product. But that was really a bad joke. I guess you don't want to do that with Alephood Surprise either.

Speaker C: Actually we do. You do talk about. We do in a way that we've created one very nice product in the UK called bob Best of both.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: Which is a product that was created with uh, some uh, by stream of existing uh product that we didn't know what to do from a taste perspective. It's not milk because it comes from filtration and so on. But with this thing uh, you create a new product and guess what? People loved it.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great story.

Speaker C: And it worked. And it's less food waste.

Speaker A: Exactly. You can move it directly to the consumer. That's even better. Yeah.

Speaker B: Another great example at least for the ones living in Denmark is the cheese sticks that our kids, at least my kids are eating them and loving them in the meal boxes. The cheese sticks. Right. You have the big cheeses you're producing and you have cutoffs of course because you need A nice square piece and you will have cut offs. What do you do with those? Cutoff. Right. And that's being used into the cheese sticks. Right? Because it's not. You can still eat it. Right. But where do you put it? And that's into these cheese sticks, at least that my kids love and would.

Speaker A: Yeah, my kids love that too. Yeah.

Speaker B: Yes. So, so. And I think that's again where you're sort of saying, okay, yes, we have some stride streams. How do we use those? Uh, from. In every single step. So you're fully right. Every single steps. And how do we then. Yeah, secure. We're using it.

Speaker A: Yeah. There are many steps inside, uh, the scope 1 and 2. But of course if we go outside to scope 3M maybe let's talk a bit about how you collaborate upstream with your supply chain partners like the farmers and the transporters, in order to minimize food loss and waste. David, you spoke a bit about that, uh, at the diary. Are there other things you do there that could be of interest to understand?

Speaker C: No, but I think what we, our farmers are more than suppliers to us. They are owners.

Speaker A: They're owners. Yeah.

Speaker C: So I think we have a very, uh, special relationship, uh, with our farmers, obviously, uh, by design. And of course this give us an opportunity to really, uh, collaborate further integrating uh, the farm in our whole supply chain. And we have a lot of data, we have a lot of best practice, uh, uh, that uh, we exchange. In arla, we have 10,000 farmers and of course there are better farmers than others. But if you could bring the less good farmers to the best, then you make already a big, big difference. And we have a huge database, a huge data, and we give farmers uh, those data so that they can um, be better in terms of farming practices. And this includes carbon, but this includes also, um, all the elements of sustainability, including food waste. Uh, so that's uh, that's, that's, that's one important uh, thing. Uh, and to be honest, this is, this is. When you talk about upstream suppliers, this is 90% of what is at stake.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, agreed. You do have other suppliers, of course.

Speaker C: Exactly. But we also engage, uh, other suppliers. Um, of course most of our logistics is done, but when we outsource, uh, the inbound logistics, we of course have some, um, um, you know, um, standards and the way to operate in order to minimize the waste across our supply chain. So of course we do that.

Speaker B: Uh,

Speaker C: and yeah, we want to engage every suppliers, but the biggest, I just want to be clear that the biggest volume we're talking about Is the milk and it starts at the farm.

Speaker A: Yeah, agreed. Okay, so that was the upstream part. Let's look at the downstream part towards the retailers, the consumers. Um, maybe Mia, that's one for you. What role do you play in Arla, uh, or do ARLA play as a company in reducing food waste? If you go further downstream to the consumer and the retailer, you can say

Speaker B: this is super essential, that part that you're mentioning here. Right. I think it's actually also when we collaborated with Deloitte we saw really much. Okay. We looked at the industry average for dairy business. Where is the food waste? Actually we look at the full value chain and I think if you for example, just look at the consumer alone. So even ignoring the retailer part, but the consumer part alone, 71% of all dairy food waste is in that part. Right. So it's essential that we are m not ignoring that also as Alex, even though it's a bit out of our control, it gets in this in the end. You and me, when we add our homes, it's restaurants, it's food services is how they are handling the product and how they're securing. It's being used and not wasted. Ah, but we are taking, still wanting to take uh, help here, support here and do what we can do to support them. I could give some examples. Um, but I feel because it is key, even though where we track and measure and have the best data quality is of course on what's in our own control, in our dairies and in our logistics and together with our farmers. Um, I think some examples is for example very concrete. Arla has something called an ARLA D lab. So that's where we can see some of our products is running short on shelf life. So maybe not as long as you normally promise of shelf life that is left for the consumers and customer sell things on discount that way. Also avoiding. We have collaboration and partnership with something in Denmark it's called. But it's like companies that donate uh, products, uh, to people in society that uh, is struggling. Uh, or they could be to um, different events. It could be to all sorts of things that they're donating. That's where we also have partnerships to secure. It's not being wasted, but it's being used and being given away, uh, instead of being put into the bin. Um, with retailers we also work a lot around packaging. You know, how can we secure that it's not being destroyed or damaged during transport or in the stores? Because that's again wasted products. So what is causing the damages? It could be the cooling chains. Are, um, we clear enough, Are the retailers clear enough on how that to handle the product to keep the shelf life as long as possible? Um, and then in general, understanding the retail sales pattern, the better we can be at the forecast. Accuracy and understanding what they want to sell and when. The more we know it, the better they know it, the more we can help each other to secure they have the right product at the right time, uh, at the shelves. Right. So there's many things with the retailers. Should I talk a bit more about the customers? Um, then. Education and inspiration is a key thing for us. So what do we do here is. I think we're very much ruling out the mentor saying best before, but good afternoon or could be often good after. I think we're saying often good after. So this is around how you can smell to things, look at things, not just throw it out before the. Because the best before date is expired. It's also inspiration. On Instagram, we have an Instagram account where we sort of recipe inspirations on when you have leftovers. How could you use that in different recipes? Ah, it's also. We have.

Speaker A: That's actually quite interesting. I've seen a number of these Instagrams where you. I guess it's not Isle of Food people, it's just normal, ordinary people out there that get good ideas and then they share it around on Instagram. It's. It's very inspiring how you can make your own cheese, uh, from a, uh, milk that is getting a bit sour.

Speaker B: I think one of the things I saw as well, people freezing things, putting, hey, you can freeze it. Did you know, you know, if it's running close and expiry days, there's some of the products you can freeze and take it up later like you do with meat. At least I do it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I know you can do it with butter. Yeah.

Speaker B: Yes. Um, we also do it with schools. So have different programs with schools, uh, inviting schools in again to, to learn them around how it is that you're not just looking at the date, but you know how you can look at a product and feel and taste and use it. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker A: So I think that's a huge agenda to, uh, educate the consumer. Uh, I guess this is a, uh, podcast in itself how to do that. There are so many things we can do exactly. Just for food. Yeah. So let's leave it. Yeah.

Speaker C: I would say, uh, just to build on all what Mia said. Uh, there are two elements on this is it starts with the way we design our product to Ensure that the quantity match what the consumer needs. But it's also about how we manage our total uh, supply chain. And on this part we are putting a lot of effort on our supply chain planning activities because you know, you need to synchronize the demand and the supply and milk is coming every day. And we have an industry which is ah, a pool and a push at the same time. The milk is coming from the farm. We need to transform it into something that the consumer wants. But the consumer consumption is changing every day depending on the temperature and so on. So I know you have this uh, crazy product in Denmark where when it's getting hot. Exactly. You have it possible to forecast. Exactly. But it does not mean that because you want this product that there will be more milk to produce it. So we need to permanently readjust our supply chain and plan it properly so a large part of uh, these outbound food waste can be optimized for better planning and using new system and technologies, uh, uh, to be better at forecasting and at uh, anticipating demand and synchronize our supply chain.

Speaker A: That's a very good example that actually holds for every industry, but even more for your industry because they're so short. Shelf life on things.

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker A: Very, very interesting. Um, you know, one of my consultants was very, very interested in some of the ideas you developed uh, during your projects of how to be innovative in removing food waste. Um, you have some upcycling initiatives going on. Can you maybe let us a bit more in on what's that all about?

Speaker C: Well, yeah, I think uh, first of all, uh, the whole dairy industry has evolved over the past years. Maybe uh, it's not known to a lot of people, but we've created businesses out of our leftovers. We had the example of uh, Bob or these cheese sticks. But there is a bigger example. I mean we know that historically when we were making cheese, we were producing a kind of um, uh, uh, a liquid which is containing some protein and we didn't know what to do with it. Uh, and it was most of the time waste. Then after we started to feed the pig with that. That's good, but not the best. But now we have valorized this into whey protein that you can find for sport nutrition, infant nutrition, medical nutrition. And we have, we are, we are developing a lot of uh, um, uh, you know, uh, we are making a lot of focus in order to extract from our leftovers the jewels that we didn't know we had in the, the protein that we were not using as part of our cheese Process to the point that sometime it becomes even more interesting to make uh, more cheese to valorize this whey protein in the business. So I think that's a good example of uh, what we have been doing in the past. But when we cannot do that, when we cannot valorize, uh, what we have in our hands, we need to find other ways not uh, to lose it. And recently, uh, uh, you may have seen that we have uh, partners with some insect farms in order to feed the new insect. You know, insect is also a new um, thing future uh, food in the food industry with new kind of protein. I'm not sure I, I get really uh, you know, ready to eat insect as part of my uh, diet every day. But by the way, I tried it, uh, I tried it, you know, uh, uh, some crispy insect, uh, for the uh, for. For the apparatus. But I'm still getting not used to it.

Speaker A: Maybe a yogurt with the crispy things on top.

Speaker C: Exactly. Oh, we can make a yogurt with crispy uh, insects and a bit of sugar. Yeah, maybe that's the way. But to feed these insects they need protein. And as Mia was saying, a large part of our food waste is a lot of water with tiny uh, you know, molecules that we cannot, uh, you know, use in our process because this is so tiny. So. But still these tiny molecules can feed those insects. And this is what we, we've been uh, partnering with this insect farm in, in Denmark. It's still, it's still early days, quite a small volume. Uh, but, but if we think uh, insect farming at scale, it can become quite, quite important.

Speaker A: Agreed. You have these uh, three principles. First, uh, you try to prevent that you have food waste and loss. And secondly, you will try to upcycle. And then you concluded that you will have no landfill.

Speaker C: Yes.

Speaker A: This is very, very rare that you see that in the food industry. I don't think there are many food companies producing today that doesn't have some kind of landfill.

Speaker C: Uh,

Speaker B: I think that's where we all want to go. Right. And that's where we believe also that we can take ourselves by 2030 and even before if we talk landfill, part of it is uh, linked to having capacity to tanks to capture this waste, uh, product, um, the water with the milk in. Ah. So actually having the capacity available to deal with these side streams that we're having is a huge lever for us where we can see that we can and we have the plans and activities in place to very soon go to zero waste to landfill. Then the key part is of course, uh, then an easy way when you capture things and avoid it. Going to landfill is using it for energy production. So going into biogas and that's of course where we want to secured gets further up in the food hierarchy, uh, into uh, minimum animal feed but preferable into human consumption. And that's why the upcycle is so key. But as you're of course saying, the first and foremost task we're having is to prevent it. So that's coming back to the talk around real life sensors understanding that we're not having any leakage in any pipes, uh and simply following it step by steps that we talked about earlier. Right. So, so these are the key essentials for, for the whole food waste strength.

Speaker A: And you and you are very good in this. Definitely uh, a leader I would say in this hierarchy of building it and moving most of it to prevention and maybe the uh, cycling if it cannot be prevented, uh, with no landfill, that's quite admirable. Okay, I think we're getting to the end.

Speaker B: One note maybe here is you know we talked a lot around this water with milk in. Right. And for me when, when I started we started developing food waste strategy and also when I speak with our organization, how much is this hard waste or the typical product waste? So that's why it's so key. You know. Yes, some of it is better than putting it to landfill to use energy recovery. But no, if we want it to not be food waste, we need to go up to animal feed or of human consumption. Right. So, so it's actually very little that is in Alice own control that is this hard waste.

Speaker A: Yeah, agreed. And that's why it's so admirable what, what you then have in control. You do quite a lot of efforts in, in securing that. So that, that's very, very impressive. Now at the end here, if we should get to any kind of recommendation, you know, industry wise or um, maybe even going beyond that, what would you recommend, uh, others in the food and beverage industry to look for when they need to do more in, in reducing food loss and waste. I mean you're quite advanced in what you do in many steps. Um, so if some companies need to move further downstream down the line on this, what kind of advice would you give them or there any recommendations or learnings you can share with us?

Speaker B: I can start and say at least when we started looking into this, one of the big advantages that we're having was having the transparency on some of the data points and we're working still on it. But the More transparency you're having on where is our waste, what composition is this waste having? Because it's not enough knowing the waste. You need to know what type of waste is so I can do something around, upcycle it or preferably prevent it. Really knowing where and what type, but also why is it happening. I think that's sort of the logical uh, I think common sense for nearly everything we look at. Right. That's the essentials. And then partnerships and collaborations to solve it. Not thinking you can solve things, everything yourself internally. Yes, we uh, can do something in supply chain, but collaborating with our innovation departments, collaborating with uh, the commercial organization or customers, universities, startups, making it transparent. What is the side streams or the waste streams that we're having that we today do not have the solutions for us so that we can innovate together. I think that's really some of the key things for me at least knowing and then collaborating and partnerships, uh, would be uh, the key takeaway for me. When you look at, and start looking into food. Food waste.

Speaker A: Yeah, that sounds like uh, two very good suggestions. Insights and data and uh, and partnerships with multiple different partners. What do you think, David?

Speaker C: Well, first I would like to, to echo what uh, what Mia is saying. You cannot improve what you don't measure. Right. So, so, but it goes without saying, but to be honest, we still, you say we are advanced, but we're still at the beginning of the journey to really understand and measure at every step of our supply chain because it requires a lot of data and so on. Of course you know, from a financial standpoint, you know how much it costs because you know what you take in, you know what you sell. So there is differences. It's easy for finance people to say, oh, we have this uh, X million euro of waste. Yes. But to really understand where it is, where we lose the material, it requires a lot of sensors, a lot of focus at operational level and not only financial, it's about kilograms, it's about uh, leaders that we need to measure. So uh, that's very important and that's to prevent uh, then I think on the upcycle, uh, I think it's a mindset thing that you need to change. You can see waste as a cost, but you can see waste as a value or potential value.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker C: And this is where you need to engage the uh, whole organization not only in supply chain to create value out of this waste, creating new products. As we were talking about, uh, because my very first job, I started to say I worked for many companies in the food My very first job was in pet food. The pet food industry was making a huge growth and profit just taking the leftovers of the abattoirs of the meat, trying to make something that was nutritionally proper for pets.

Speaker A: That makes sense.

Speaker C: And it's the starting point of. And this was an industry that didn't exist 50 years ago, by the way. It was, you know, it was created because basically we were feeding our pets with leftovers on the table. But then they created the industry to say, okay, can we try to be more convenient? And so on. And basically they ended up with an industry that is still super successful, super profitable. Just using the mindset that uh, there are leftovers we can valorize and can be a benefit. Ah. For, for humans, but also for other animals or whatever. And this is a mindset thing. So start also with on the upscaling. It's a mindset you need to break. The way the company is operating. I think the whey example in the dairy is also a good way to think differently. As we used to. We don't produce a cheese and by the way, we have leftovers. We don't know what to do with it. But we try to think differently. How we can turn waste from a, uh, burden into an opportunity.

Speaker A: Yeah, from cost to profit.

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker A: How are you going to do that? Yeah, that's super interesting and super relevant, uh, for most industries actually. I know they're doing it also in the construction industry. When they tear down a construction work when they're done, there's a lot of leftover of wood and things around the building that they then can reuse and sell again. Uh, rewood I think they call it. So this is very interesting and something that I guess we will have more and more of given EU's a number of new rules that they are sending out.

Speaker C: But I think the new generation is even more used to this with, you know, I'm thinking about clothes. I mean my daughter never use any clothes. New clothes. I mean she just go to uh, you know, secondhand clothes and so on. So we'll come. I think the new generation is even better equipped than us to think this way.

Speaker A: I agree. And soon we'll have the act to repair. Right. To repair. That will also help us quite a lot push that agenda.

Speaker C: Exactly.

Speaker A: Both of you, thank you so much for giving us this insight into what's going on at Isle Foods when it comes to, to food loss and waste. This is super interesting. Thank you for listening to this episode of, uh, Sustainable supply chains by definition. Lloyd, I hope you found the conversations interesting and useful. If you want to learn more, please follow the link in the show Notes where you may find more interesting things on sustainable supply chains, for example Articles, cases, methods and more. Stay tuned for more episodes by subscribing to the podcast and keep yourself updated. See you later.