Waste in the field, the factory and in the kitchen – the truth behind the scandal of global food waste
UN Manifesto Chef Arthur Potts Dawson joins Tristram Stuart, author, campaigner and founder of Toast Ale and food waste charity Feedback and Will Edge, founder of Greensand Ridge Distillery, as they talk with Amanda about the global scandal that leaves farmers unpaid, food rotting in fields and waste on an epic scale while millions starve.
Our guests:
Arthur Potts Dawson is a classically trained chef and outstanding eco restaurateur and is now a Manifesto Chef for the World Food Programme. Trained originally buy the Roux brothers he worked in the restaurant industry for 30 years and for the past 10 years he has been creating opening and running sustainable food businesses putting sustainability at the heart of everything he does, constantly asking the question “ how the food industry can change, trying to provide solutions to make the system better and generating further challenges”
Will Edge is the founder an CEO Greensand Ridge Gin. Will grew up in the weald of Kent and like so many of his classmates started is working life in London and the city. However Home brews were his hobby – featuring at his wedding – but fatherhood and a realistion that life behind a desk was not really for him triggered a return to the Kent countryside and a commitment to a more sustainable lifestyle. The Greensand Ridge distillery was born in 2015 from as an answer to the question, how to you take an energy intensive process as distilling is, and not only reduce its environmental footprint, but have it make a positive contribution to sustainability?
Not only do they use 100% renewable energy, but they also work with local farmers to reduce food waste at the farm gate by fermenting and distilling quality produce that supermarkets wont take.
Following the critical success of his first book, The Bloodless Revolution (2006), and his international prize-winning book, Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal (Penguin, 2009), Tristram Stuart founded the environmental charity Feedback which works internationally to improve the environmental impact of food. Tristram has been awarded the international environmental award, The Sophie Prize, an Observer Food Monthly Award; he is an Ashoka Fellow, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and a WEF Young Global Leader; his TED talk has been watched over a million times. Feedback’s campaigns and events, including Feeding the 5000 (where 5000 meals, made entirely from quality food that would have been wasted, are given away for free), The Gleaning Network UK/EU and The Pig Idea have been launched with partner organisations including UNEP, EU and grassroots groups in dozens of countries across the globe.