Episode 4 - Rescuing Imperfect Produce to Reduce Food Waste
Delicious, usable foods are being thrown out every day, with food waste soaring at the same time that people go hungry. Our preference for pretty produce contributes to that food waste - but instead of going to the garbage, imperfect fruits and vegetables can be transformed into new foods, cutting down on food waste while nourishing people. With the work and love that goes into growing, nurturing, and harvesting food, it is important that we recognize and hold its value.
Reseed host Alice Irene Whittaker discusses food rescue with David Côté, the co-founder of LOOP Mission. LOOP is a Montreal-based company that rescues fruits and veggies, day-old bread, potato cuttings, and upcycled oil, and then transforms them into juices, smoothies, beer, gin, and probiotic drinks. David is a serial entrepreneur and author of several cookbooks, and it was recently announced that he will be a dragon on Dragon’s Den in Québec in 2022.
In this conversation, David and Alice Irene discuss food waste, the circular economy, how to make food systems more equitable, the commodification of food, and what our relationship to food tells us about our society. They talk about how we can steward our food system to enrich soil, improve air and water quality, nurture biodiversity, and create more abundant human health.
The food system is fertile ground for living in a more circular and regenerative way. To create such a system, we need both regenerative food growing, and eliminating food waste - like rescuing fruits and vegetables, through not just individual action but more importantly through deep-rooted change.
Transcript
Alice Irene Whittaker (intro): Welcome to Reseed, a podcast about repairing our relationship to nature.Reseed tells the stories of a RE generation: the people embracing repair, redesign, reuse, and reduction. The people who are uprooting the extractive status quo and rooting the future in justice, wellbeing, resilience, and care. This is a podcast for those of us who are re-imagining our relationship to the natural world and to each other. I am Alice Irene Whittaker, the host of Reseed. Together, let's plant the seeds that transform us from being takers to caretakers.
Alice Irene: Welcome. Today, I speak with David Côté, co-founder of LOOP Mission, a project that works to reduce food waste by rescuing perfectly good produce that is headed for landfill, and then transforming it into everything from fresh pressed juice, to soap, to dog treats to gin. David and I talk about food waste, the circular economy, how to make food systems more equitable, the commodification of food, reframing chaos and what our relationship to food tells us about our society.
David Côté: There's this global consciousness that's emerging about food waste, about our actions, about what we're buying as a citizen has an impact on the planet and there is this desire from the citizens to actually make a change. In 15 years, you won't see the food waste that we see today. It's going to disappear.
Alice Irene: Before my conversation with David I'll briefly let you know that I released another episode today with Jad Robitaille from Mini-Cycle, a start-up that specializes in circular economy for kid’s fashion. They rescue and re-circle clothing as many times as possible lowering the impact on the environment while also making zero waste circular kid’s fashion more accessible.
Alice Irene: Jad, like David, is also someone who is creating and cultivating and advancing the circular economy in Montreal, Canada. And because of these interconnections, I released both episodes today. You can expect episodes of Reseed to come out every two weeks. And the next episode is with Erica Violet Lee and Brianna Brown from Indigenous Climate Action on January 3rd in the new year.
Alice Irene: If you're enjoying Reseed, please consider leaving a review on Apple podcasts and share the podcast with people in your life with whom you think it would resonate. So, David Côté, he is a serial entrepreneur. Before his mission to save rejected food, he co-founded a kombucha company and an organic vegan restaurant chain, and he wrote seven raw food cookbooks.
Alice Irene: Most recently it was announced that David will be a dragon on Dragon's Den in 2022 here in Quebec. LOOP Mission was co-founded in Montreal by David and his partner Julie Poitras-Saulnier and their dream is to end food waste. In our country that wastes unfathomable amounts of food, they take rescued fruits and veggies, day-old bread, potato cuttings, and upcycled oil and they transform them into juices, smoothies, beer, gin, and probiotic drinks.
Alice Irene: They work with food that like me, like all of us, is perfectly imperfect. They are a part of the growing circular economy, where people are reimagining how we design and interact with every single system, from food to electronics, to fashion, so that there is no waste. Instead of the linear status quo that we're all too familiar with, where we are continually taking, making and wasting, the circular economy reduces how much we consume in the first place i.e. refusing and rejecting what we don't need. It means that we redesign our products and systems so that there is no waste. We repurpose the waste that normally in a linear economy would be going to landfill. And we regenerate the natural systems that have been damaged by the extractive way that we have been and are living.
Alice Irene: The food system is fertile ground for living in a more circular way. Food is everything. It nourishes us. It connects our bodies to the earth, to the soil. It can connect our cities with the land. We live in a world currently where the food system is a major contributor of greenhouse gases and which is leaving so many of our fellow human beings hungry.
Alice Irene: We know change is necessary. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation writes, “changing our food system to be one based on the principles of the circular economy is one of the most powerful things we can do to tackle climate change and build biodiversity. We can achieve this and provide healthy, nutritious food for all.” I love how they call it the big food redesign, where our food system is designed in a way where nature thrives. It will take so many people, dare I say, all of us to transform our food systems so that they are circular, regenerative, and local. Circular in that there is no waste with everything cycling in a closed loop that is inspired by nature's beautiful timeless cycles. Regenerative in that it is actually giving back to the earth in a relationship of reciprocity. Local in that we're eating from the land that we live on and building relationships with our local farmers and growers.
Alice Irene: The way that we steward our food system can be an opportunity to enrich soil, improve air and water quality, nurture biodiversity, and create more abundant health in our own animal bodies. To create such a system, we need both regenerative food growing and eliminating food waste. That's the part we're going to talk about today. Here is my conversation with David Côté.
Alice Irene: Hi, David. Welcome. Thanks for being here today.
David: Thanks for having me Alice.
Alice Irene: My pleasure. I wanted to start by asking about you as a child, and if you could talk about your relationship with the natural world when you were a kid?
David: Well, I've been one of the lucky ones where I grew up in nature. I got really lucky for this. I grew up in total nature surrounded by forest. And my dad is a doctor and he was a big fan of nature also. I think my oldest memory is walking in the forest with my dad and my three brothers picking up herbs and mushrooms and learning about the edibles of nature. I think I was two years old and that's my oldest memory I have in life is that, so nature has always been really close to me really.
Alice Irene: Beautiful. That's sort of the childhood that I'm working at cultivating with my kids, but it's interesting hearing your perspective on that type of childhood.
David: It's quite fascinating. We then moved when I was six years old to the city, but I always kept this strong connection with nature where, you know, at 16 years old, I wanted to go to hike the world. So I started hiking, doing extreme hikes and the Appalachian trail and the Pacific Crest trail and the Continental Divide. I wanted to be in survival mode in my life, even if I grew in the city, just because I had this nature part when I was young, I think.
Alice Irene: Interesting. And I can imagine that that feeds into the work that you're doing now in some way. I would love to hear what brought you to care about reducing food waste. I can hear from that sort of backstory why you would care about nature, but what brought you to food waste and reducing it?
David: I became really rapidly an activist in term of environmental issues. Even when I was at high school, I was forcing people to recycle around me. You know, it was a new concept at that time. And I read a sentence, I read a quote from Einstein that said the biggest step we can take for the environment is to change your eating habits. So I got really into food and nutrition to eat the best way possible for my own environment, my own ecosystem, but also the outside world and eating brought me to open a raw food vegan restaurant.
David: And that brought me to witness food waste in the restoration world. Right? So it wasn't the first thing, you know, I wasn't really touched by food waste when I was younger, but it's more of my whole path that brought me to this. And I started buying food in bigger quantities. I started having nine restaurants, so having more food to manage and more food to buy, I started doing deals with bigger food corporations and importers and things and such, and that's how I saw those speculation systems and how food is not really seen as a part of us, a part of nature. It is just seen as a commodity, right? And as a commodity it's calculation of how much you can waste in terms of percentage, of financial percentage, to make sure that you’re still profitable, right?
David: So there's this whole thing that I understood at the time then, and that's what brought me to food waste really. And you know, what really made my move of selling it, all of my other businesses and starting LOOP. Where one day when I had one phone call from one distributor that heard of me and told me he was throwing away 16 to 25 tons of fruits and vegetables every single day. 16 tons every single day minimum he was throwing when he called me. And he was the biggest, one of the major food distributor, well-produced distributor, in Canada, but there's still many more like them that throws food like this. So that's when I had a big ignition and I said, okay, we need to do something right now.
Alice Irene: That's an unbelievable amount of waste every day. And it's true, food is such an expression of the natural world and of nature and connects us with it every day. We depend on it obviously, I loved hearing about your path and what brought you to LOOP, and maybe you can tell me a little bit more about LOOP Mission? What's the story of how you co-founded it after that experience that encouraged you to cancel your other businesses and start LOOP? And what are you focused on today with LOOP?
David: At the same time that Dan's phone, that specific phone call, I also met Julie who I didn't know, but we met in the Ferris wheel actually it was pretty romantic. Julie was a sustainability marketing specialist and she did an environmental science master and she was in marketing and sustainability and bigger food corporation out there.
David: She was dreaming of a business where the more you sell something, the better it is for the world. So not only having a carbon neutral company, but a carbon positive company, no matter how much you grow, the better it is for the world. Cause most of companies they start well with a good idea, but the more they're growing, the more they're having a huge impact on the environment. And most of sustainability is linked with marketing in those corporations. The department is often seen as an expense first of all. And as a department that's created to give a nicer perspective of the company to kind of do less bad instead of doing more good, really, if I can use this expression.
David: So she was kind of fed up of this and we met and we dreamed to start a business together with the same idea. So we quit everything. She sold her house. I sold my business. And we started LOOP full-time. I went from having 120 employees to having zero employees and have a start-up again from our own apartment.
David: And I started delivering again with our little truck, and that's how LOOP started really. We started with four juices. We had four juice made with the overstock of produce from one specific distributor that was throwing away a lot. We took all of their data and we looked at what was wasted the most, and we took those low hanging fruits, you know, that it was in big quantity. And we made recipes out of it and created a cold press juice line called LOOP Mission made with the upcycled ingredients from another company. That's how that whole projects started.
David: And then it seems like far away, but it's only five years ago that we started this and we got so many phone calls from so many actor of the food industry. That we kind of switched from being a juice company, to being just an upcycling company that just fights food waste in any way that’s possible, as long as we make a CPG (consumer packaged good) product out of it, that's what we do
Alice Irene: Recently you've become a bit of an emergency call center, as I understand it, which is maybe what you're speaking about. That where businesses in the food industry have food waste and come to you. Can you tell me more about how you form those partnerships and how that program works?
David: Yeah, that's exactly it. People heard of us to the branches and now any food manufacturer, farmer, grocer, or distributor, whenever they have waste, they call us and they say, listen, I'm throwing away. It happened last week. Again, the guy told me, well, I had so much strawberries this summer. I froze them all. I don't know what to do with them. I have 50,000 pounds. Can you take them? And I took them all. I just took all of strawberries. I bought it from him. Well, so we do another company called me two weeks ago and said, we’re throwing a dough from our pie. It's a big pie manufacturer in Canada. They throw about two tons of dough every week. And they said, can you do something about it? So, I got a sample. And so we have an RND machine that just looks at all of the waste out there, you know, attracts samples and tries to find the low hanging fruit.
David: And for us, the low hanging fruit is a product that's being wasted in big quantity that is easy to transform into a new product right? There's some complicated product like coffee grind, for example. Which is a big waste out there, but it's not a low hanging fruit meaning it's really hard to transform it into a human consumption or into something that's going to make volume out of it.
David: And we want to be as far away as possible from the greenwashing. Meaning that we don't want to save some tiny ingredient and put it in something and create a brand with it. We want to save as much as possible. So that's why that's the main focus that we look at when people call us with their waste.
Alice Irene: So closing the loop on food waste has this opportunity to also become more equitable. So when we're looking at redesigning systems, we can obviously look at how it's intersecting with so many other issues that we're facing. How can food systems become more accessible and inclusive?
David: I think food waste is at the core of it. First of all, the reason that food has this price on the market, the reason the banana is 50 cents a pound and broccoli is 75 cents a pound is a good part of that margin is taken because there's so much waste during the whole linear servicing to get the banana on the shelf, right?
David: So because the farmer lose food in the farm, about 10%, the distributor lose food on the distribution channel, about 4%, the grocery store lose food, about 15% like a big quantity. So all of these people, all of these actors in the chain of distribution and, or growing and everything, they all have to charge the next buyer their loss. And this extra charge that everybody takes along the way makes it that the consumer pays about 45% extra for food that we shouldn't have. If we really take care the right way and we don't expect such high abundance on the shelf, we'll be able to do what I call disinflation, where the price of things would actually go down because every actor of the system will have the right amount of money for the right amount of crop that they sold or grew.
David: What I'm meaning here is that we pay too much for food because we're wasting it - in a sentence. And if there were companies like us that actually tried to help the farmers and the distributors and all of these actors to get money out of there, normally what they're wasting, then this money that they get in their pocket. That's why we call it circular economy, right? There's this circular of course, but we're not a non-profit that depends on the nation. We're a for-profit company integrated in the capitalistic system where we give money to people if they're actually managing their waste properly. The only reason we didn't manage waste before is because people didn’t have time to do it, right?
David: Any entrepreneurs out there when they wake up in the morning, they're thinking, how can I make more money? They never look at their waste. They look at how can I sell more? How can I become more competitive? How can I get machines so that I have less labor costs? How can I reduce the quality of my stuff so I import it from further away where the labor is cheaper? So it's cheaper for me. So it's always decisions that harm the environment instead of doing the opposite.
David: And now we're telling those entrepreneurs, the same entrepreneurs, we're telling them you will make money by looking at your waste. So instead of throwing yourselves, you can just look at everything you're wasting, sell it to us. You'll make a profit where it used to be a financial loss, you increase your EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) or your net profits. And from there you'll become more competitive in the market. You'll be able to reduce your price and sell more of it.
David: This whole process that I just explained is exactly what we did with, our biggest partner. We gave them last year in 2020, $1.8 million dollar that they never had before. These 1.8 million dollars they received from us was from four ingredients that they used to send to the garbage. They used to pay money to send it to landfill because it costs money to send a skid of produce to the landfill. It costs money. Right? So instead of spending money to send it to landfill, we bought it from them to a total of 1.8 million dollars. This amount of dollar is net revenues compared to the previous year. It's actually net revenues that they made in their pockets where suddenly they can choose, am I going to do more marketing? Am I going to reduce my costs? What can I do with this? Then they decided to reduce costs on some things. It's more affordable. So they become the more competitive. And if everybody started doing this, everybody starts looking at their waste and finding a partner that can actually buy it.
David: Suddenly we become, it's just common sense really. It's really, it's not genius at all. It's really just using our resources. Looking at our resources like they actually have a value and they have a value. Right. And that's why a lot of companies right now offer us donations like Sobeys a few months ago told me David, they have a truck load of carrots, please take it. And I said, no, I'm not going to take it. I'm going to buy it. Because there's value to it. Those carrots are perfectly fine. They're just victim of speculates and you just have too many, you don't know what to do with them. So you're giving it to me instead of having to send it to landfill.
David: But I'm going to give you 10 cents a pound for those carrots. You'll make money out of it. So, next time you'll think of calling me even faster, right? And this is how we change the system and we change and we impact those big corporations that didn't have time to look at it before. Sorry, it was a long monologue. I'm excited about it.
Alice Irene: I love it. I love the excitement, seeing the amount of food that you're bringing in, the amount of food that you're rescuing, and saving, and the amount of money that's involved all coming from something that you started in your apartment a few years ago obviously has had a huge impact in terms of how much food has been rescued. And I like how specific your drinks are in that when you look at them, they explain where the food waste comes from and how that process works. So how do you find the food that is in need of rescuing? Is it always what you were talking about here where a company has a lot of waste and then they come to you or are you ever out there looking for it?
David: We are never looking for it ever from the start of this company, even on the first phone call, it was someone that called me. And since then it's only corporation or farmers or distribution that calls us all the time. It's amazing how we became the kind of the center of food waste. I'm really, really proud of it. And I'm really happy because now people have us as a reference. The amount of food that we have access to compared to what we're saving is kind of dramatic. Like we have access to about 300 tons of produce every week right now. And we're saving only about 50 or 60 and that's the reason that we're launching so many different products is because only one product category will not be enough in terms of commercial need from the consumers to actually go through all of the waste that's out there.
David: So that's why we're launching so many line of products and you'll see us pretty soon in every single aisle of the grocery store. You'll see a LOOP Mission branded product because we're in the race. We're racing to be able to use everything that we get offered by people around us.
Alice Irene: I'm thinking of all of that potential of that food out there that otherwise would end up in landfill. By nature, you seem to be very entrepreneurial and enjoy disruption. Is that true? Or am I putting words in your mouth and how does that play into your work with LOOP?
David: Yeah, that's a good one. Somehow I am seen by my team and my wife, who's the CEO and President of the company kind of like a disruptor, but also I kind of love chaos in a way. I think life is born in chaos and this chaos is some kind of an order. I kind of love it like this. Right? So that's why we have so many projects on the go. And that's why LOOP Mission is where I really need it to be because it's this company where we're not attached to a line of product.
David: The other businesses I launched before, after a while, I was kind of becoming a trap for the system itself that I've built because not every company can actually change and make so many products and still be relevant, but because of our core mission of reducing food waste. We could actually launch anything tomorrow. Right? We could even start launching a clothing line that's made with food coloring for like clothing out of fish nets. And our branding and mission will still be relevant, but I think it will still make sense. And this is how our business, I think, is so resilient because we're not attached to any products. You know, if we stop making juice tomorrow morning because of any kind of problems our business will still thrive because it's a mission. It's a purpose. And the product is only secondary, right? They're basically the ripple effect of the purpose.
Alice Irene: That makes a lot of sense. And I like this reframing of chaos as something that's where life comes from and something to lean into versus trying to control. I think that's something I need to think on a bit. The circular economy is growing in momentum with citizens. And I'm sure you've seen that over these past five years since you started LOOP. And how much do you see yourself as part of that movement, that growing movement? And do you think it's a helpful term in public discourse? So do you find that waste resonates more with people, the idea of food waste and reducing waste, or is it really about the circular economy?
David: I think they're both very relevant. And one needs the other. In terms of messaging, food waste is way stronger because people connect with it, people understand it. And circular economy is a bit more intellectual. What I've seen so far in the world, like I'm a big doer. I like to be concrete and I've been invited a lot in circular economy event and forum and things like this and I always clash a little bit in these events because I feel like we're the people doing it and we're not thinking about it.
David: I'm not theoretical at all. Like, there is no theory in what we're doing. What we're doing is really common sense. Like it's really just using the full potential of our resources and seeing them as value because it is value, right? And in this circular economy world where there's a lot of theory and we talk about it and we see I can change the future, but I think it's all about action.
David: And that's where I think there's a little clash there, but at the same time, I use circular economy all the time as a term because the word economy is absolutely very, very important, right? Because you know, if you talk just about waste, then you'll think about food banks and you think about this, but we will not change a world and we will not change all of the waste out there if we only look at a lens of waste. We need to talk about the economy cause it's with money that I influence the big corporations to offer us their food, really. And if there's no economic sense to it, it won't make sense to those big corporation, right?
Alice Irene: Right. It's like that example of the truck full of carrots where you're seeing value, not seeing a truck full of waste that needs to be disposed of.
David: Exactly. Exactly.
Alice Irene: This next question is a big one. So food is everything. It comes from the earth. It nourishes us. It allows us to survive and it's cultural too. Reducing food waste has been a practice in many cultures throughout history. And in many ways, we’re re-circling back to that. What do you think it says about us as a society that we do waste so much food and you see that closer than anyone really, but also that we care about doing better? That there's this groundswell of people who care about doing better. How do you think we can shift our relationship to food and waste?
David: Oh, it is a big one. We are shifting, right? It's not, if we can, or are we going to achieve it? I think it's actually a momentum and the momentum has started. Right. The things are now in motion that cannot really be undone. There’s this amazing kind of global consciousness that's emerging about food waste, about our actions, about what we're buying as a citizen has an impact on the planet. I think this was not there at all 15 years ago. Right? So there's this desire from the citizens to actually make a change, but more importantly there's a desire of the bigger corporation. And I know I talk about it about corporation and money and stuff, but money rules the world right now, and the big companies are ruling the world more than governments right now.
David: They're the one that's that are making the biggest decisions out there. And they're the ones that have the most impact. And those companies did realize in the last decade that without a sustainability course, without a sustainability agenda to make their business more green, not only in terms of the facade too, as a marketing, but at their core, they won't have any HR retention. They can have a hard time to keep their customer also their businesses is not necessarily going to thrive in the future. And this created something that's now in motion that as I said cannot be undone. Right. So that's why I do believe that we live in a world that we won't see in 15 years, you won't see the food waste that we see today.
David: It's going to disappear. And I'm sure of it. Right. I know it because of the impact that we have, because of the scale of the growth that we've been having at LOOP and the speed at which we're growing. The phone calls that we have are not from small farmers anymore or from a family owned restaurant in the street. They’re from the Del Monte, it's from Kraft, it's from Dole, it's from Conagra. Those are the people that call us like in the last year and said, okay, how can we make our food waste disappear? How can you help us? And to me, this is a proof that something is happening and we won't see food waste in 15 years. That's my belief.
Alice Irene: I certainly hope so. And I would like to see that come to be. Do you think that from your experience doing and on the front lines, do you think that working with companies and within this system, but to disrupt how we're treating waste, do you think that's the fastest way to that future or the best way to that future?
David: To me, it is the only way. And I'm going to sound radical here, but I guess I'm always been the radical. But the big corporation that I wanted to go away when I was younger as an environmental activist are now the people that I want to work with, for the simple reason that you will not change every single citizens behaviour over a decade. It's impossible. You need to work so hard to change everyone's behavior, but you can change, there's not that many, if you look at the org chart of the corporation that manages food around the globe, there's not that many really it's about six giant. So if we change those six giant and we create circular economy movement inside those big corporation, then suddenly food waste disappear. And now this is not something that most of the people will know, but 80% of waste while 79 to be more exact comes from the industry. It doesn't come from the consumer and the citizens. Yes, of course we buy kale, we leave it in the fridge. And sometimes we went to the restaurant and we forgot it, then it went to stale.
David: There is food waste that happens in everybody's home, but the core of food waste, which is and we know that food waste has a big impact on the environment, in terms of greenhouse gas emission, the core of it comes from the industry. So that's why. For us at LOOP, for my wife and I, Julie and I, our vision is really to influence those companies more than the citizens.
Alice Irene: My last question is a question around generations and ancestors. And wondering if there's anything in your history or ancestry that you think has rippled through to the work that you're doing in reducing food waste?
David: It is going to sound sad because I'm going to feel like I'm taking away the power from my ancestors, but I really think that I became who I became because of the travels that I did. Right. I wouldn't be so engaged in this if I didn't leave school at 16, 17 years old to travel the world. I left home. I went working on farms. I went and worked on organic farms around the globe and that's how I was supporting myself and I think that's where I discovered the importance of food and its value also. Because I've put work into it. Like I saw the cycle of agriculture and I planted the seeds, watered them, gave them shade when they needed, gave them light when they needed. And then, harvest the fruits and the seeds and all of it. So I saw how much work there was behind it. So I think that's where my love and nurturing for food comes from this more than my ancestors. Of course, my childhood did impact me living in nature and close to it. Of course it also impact me going away and traveling the world. But it's those specific travels that actually transformed me.
Alice Irene: That was today's episode of Reseed. I'd love to hear what you thought about our conversation. Reseed is created on unceded Algonquin land. Thank you to this place. Thank you to Rebecca Ryvola for podcast cover art and Teghan Acres for being an outside eye. And thank you for listening. Together let's plant the seeds that transform us from being takers to caretakers.