Reducing Food Waste Loop in Guelph-Wellington: Discovering Efficient Methods for Circular Food Management
Guelph, Canada, Embarks on Journey Towards First Circular Food Economy
In a bid to revolutionize the food industry, the city of Guelph and its surrounding county, Wellington, have embarked on an ambitious project to create Canada's first circular food economy. This mission is being spearheaded by the Our Food Future initiative, a pilot program designed to redefine food production, distribution, sales, and consumption.
An innovative meal that began its life as food waste at a local brewery recently took center stage in this circular food revolution. Known as the Re(PURPOSE) project, it saw seven businesses and a team of food sustainability experts collaborate to create one of the world's first off-farm circular meals. This culinary marvel, served at the Wooly Pub in Guelph, comprised a fillet of breaded steelhead trout, a side of chips, and a pint of pale ale - all produced from local food waste byproducts.
The circular meal was birthed from spent grain at Wellington Brewery, which was sent to Oreka Solutions for black soldier fly larvae feed. The larvae, in turn, provided nutrients for fish at Izumi Aquaculture, whose waste then transformed into fertilizer for potatoes at Smoyd Potato Farm. Finally, spent grain from the brewery and spent yeast from Escarpment Labs were used by local bakery The Grain Revolution to make the sourdough breading.
The Re(PURPOSE) project is just one example of how circular principles can be utilized to repurpose food waste and yield delicious results. It falls under the Circular Opportunity Innovation Launchpad umbrella, part of the Our Food Future initiative aimed at fostering circular businesses and social enterprises to collaborate on transformative circular solutions.
In 2019, Our Food Future was conceived as a proposal for Canada's Smart Cities Challenge, a competition encouraging municipalities to propose ideas for improving their residents' lives through innovation, data, and connected technology. After joining the challenge, Guelph and Wellington enlisted more than 150 partners to identify a common issue they could tackle collaboratively. After much deliberation, they settled on the food sector, given the region's rich agricultural history and vibrant restaurant scene.
Our Food Future organized around three key workstreams: nutritious food, waste as a resource, and circular businesses and collaboration. These streams focus on supporting, growing, and uniting a diverse set of stakeholders within the agrifood system, each with a specific perspective.
The aims for each workstream are admirably bold. Under the circular businesses and collaboration workstream, Guelph-Wellington aims to create 50 new circular businesses and collaborations by 2025. The Re(PURPOSE) project is just one initiative under this umbrella, as it encourages circular businesses and social enterprises to collaborate on innovative solutions.
Although ambitious, the Our Food Future initiative remains optimistic about meeting its goals due to the widespread support from the community. Guelph-Wellington continues to see more and more people joining the effort and expressing enthusiasm for the vision.
For cities seeking to emulate Guelph-Wellington's circular food economy endeavor, Barbara Swartzentruber, the project's former executive director, offers the following advice: "Every city has a food system, and there's always a place to start. But the first step is to understand where the pockets of energy around the food system are within the community — to talk to those stakeholders and bring them together with stakeholders in other sectors."
With determination, collaboration, and continuous innovation, Guelph-Wellington is charting a promising path towards Circular Food Economy, setting an example for Canada and the world in creating a sustainable, waste-reducing, and resource-efficient food system.
[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zL-5Xy8_D6nR9-32piYb9eJnC3ctjvuI/view[2] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1543946214560034[3] https://greenschoolsalliance.org/university-of-guelph/[4] https://ourfoodfuture.ca/events/[5] https://greenschoolsalliance.org/farmers-and-researchers-fostering-sustainability/
- The Re(PURPOSE) project, a circular business initiative under the Our Food Future umbrella, demonstrates how environmental-science principles can be applied to lifestyle choices, such as food-and-drink consumption, in a circular food economy.
- As Guelph, Canada, embarks on a journey towards a first circular food economy, the city will also explore opportunities to integrate technology into the process, aiming to create a more resource-efficient and sustainable food system.
