 FEO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia in its Regional Safe Food Initiative. This is the second event of these series of webinars. The first one was about food loss and waste reduction during harvest and post harvest practices. In this webinar we tried to identify and promote good practices and inspire transformative interventions to prevent a reduced food loss and waste along the whole food supply chain. So each webinar will focus on a specific stage of the food supply chain from production to consumption. Offering practical and evidence-based solutions to the issue that may be replicated or scaled up at national or regional level. During the first webinar we considered the ways to reduce food loss and waste during harvest and post harvest operations. De session today will focus on secondary processing, product transformation and packaging stages in the food value chain and the ways to reduce food loss and waste. Our speakers will present the practices used at this stage including integration of food loss and waste measures in a corporate strategy, improvement of operations, collaboration and other stages of the food supply chain, upcycling of surplus foods and development of new packaging solutions. We look very much forward to learn about their experience and interesting cases. Before we start with the first presenter, please take note of some technical information on the arrangements for this meeting. The language options are English, Russian and English Turkish interpretation is available which you can access by switching the globe icon at the bottom of your screen. We are expecting your questions and comments in writing. For this please use the question and answer box at the bottom of your screen. Do not use the chat box for this purpose. Also please indicate your name and the name of the speaker or panelist that your question is addressed to. The webinar is being recorded and broadcasted on YouTube. Ok, now let me please introduce the first two key speakers from Unilever, which are Ms. Thea Koening, senior global corporate affairs and issues manager of foods and refreshments. Ms. Marta Perricorn, supply chain manager, sustainability of foods and refreshments division in Unilever. So Thea and Marta will present the approach that Unilever takes to address food loss and waste under their future foods initiative. Marta and Thea, they will start with a small video and then the presentation continues from that. Thea, Marta, de floor is yours. Yes, thank you very much for inviting Marta and myself to share our Unilever story relating to reduction of food loss and waste. I hope the presentation can be uploaded while I'm saying a few introductory words. I hope the video has inspired you and made you curious to hear our story. So let's kick off and we can move to the next slide straight away please. Because I first want to give a brief intro of Unilever. As one of the largest foods manufacturing in the world, we feel we have a responsibility to help shape a global food system that's fair for everyone. And that's where we stand for as Unilever. Let me start with some facts on Unilever that you can see in the chart. We have a powerful portfolio of leading purposeful brands like Duff and Domestos in our home and beauty and personal care divisions. But also focusing on our foods and refreshment division. We have brands like Helmens, Knorr, Ben and Jerry's, Magnum and these products are used by 2.5 billion people every day. We have a strong presence in the growth markets of the future and we can build on unparalleled reach, distribution and capabilities. And our leadership and expertise in sustainable business gives us a significant competitive advantage. So let's move to our future food commitments that were referred to already in the next slide please. As said, we want to help shape a global food system that's fair for everyone. And that's why in our food and refreshment division we have launched our future food initiative. It's our plan to help people transition towards healthier diets and reduce the environmental impact of the food chain. To help achieve this, we've made the following commitments. We want to move to over 1 billion turnover in plant-based meat and dairy alternatives in the coming 5 to 7 years. We also want to double the number of products that deliver positive nutrition, so more fruits and vegetables, but also more micronutrients. We will continue to lower salt, sugar and calories in our products. We do that already for years, but we will continue this journey. We also believe, and that's the fourth big commitment in this space, that stopping food loss and waste across the entire food chain is critical to transforming a more sustainable food system. And that is why within our future food strategy we also announced our commitment to have food waste across our own global operations from factory to shelf by 2025. And this is 5 years earlier than the champion 12.3 goal to which we had signed up earlier. Let us start with why we believe this is so important. We are sharing our beliefs on the next slide. We feel that we need to make sure, as a big manufacturer in food, that we protect and preserve food to feed the world. That's our ultimate ambition. Because we believe food loss and waste is a tragic loss of human environment and economic capital. If we attack, address and solve this issue, it will be a win-win-win for people, planet and business. We support that for a sustainable food system we need to have food waste, as we said before. We are a proud and active member of Champions 12.3, a global coalition of leaders working to accelerate the achievement of the SDG 12.3 goal to have global per capita food waste by 2030. We strongly believe food should be retained within the food chain for human and animal consumption. Food loss and waste should be avoided wherever possible and it must not become a burden to the environment through dangerous greenhouse gas emissions. We believe the bigger impact we can have goes beyond our own direct operations. We can help by influencing our suppliers, customers and consumers. En moreover, our consumers expect our brands to help them in address food waste. We feel Unilever has a responsibility to lead here. Let's look at the next slide, what our end-to-end commitments are in the space of food waste. So further to having food waste in our own direct operations, we've also set out to the following focus areas for ourselves across the food chain. We want to make sure we enroll key supply partners to accelerate the reduction of food loss and waste in their operations. As part of our sustainability journey that started back in 2010, we have been focusing already for a number of years on helping farmers implement sustainable farming practices and comply with our sustainable agricultural code. Ever since we have been working extensively on crop loss and yield management through this code. For example in tomatoes and tea and we've put programs in place with tomato farmers in India or China. We will continue this journey, expanding it to address food waste reduction in the supply chain of our most relevant supply partners. This means we can have a much bigger impact together. On the other side of the spectrum, we will make sure we help our food service customers. We have a big food service business to tackle food waste in the horeca sector through prevention and redistribution. And through our brands, we will help consumers to waste less food at home, such as with our Helmens mayonnaise brand that has as its purpose make taste not waste. Through this set of actions, we aim to drive a bigger impact on food waste across the food chain. But importantly, we need to start with getting our own house in order and how we do that will be explained by Marta. Thanks there and good morning and good afternoon everyone. So during the session, I'm going to take I'm going to take you through how we measure waste and what we do to reduce reuse and recycle it. Next slide please. So I'm going to focus specifically on manufacturing losses and this actually form a significant portion of the losses occurring in our direct operation to put some context into place. Making our foods and refreshment products happens very similarly to cooking in our own kitchen. We have losses that occur during the dosing due to inaccuracies due to equipment performance issues during the mixing, again for inaccuracies or product leftover in tanks. And finally during the cleaning with all the products being left over in equipment and pipes, especially happening during the changeover of our recipes. So imagine changing over from a recipe that contain allergens, we need to make sure that the plant is clean before we can produce the next one. There mentioned we have a target. What happens now? Next slide please. A fundamental part of our success is determined by the ability to measure our waste. Our mantra is we cannot manage what we cannot measure. How do we do that? We had three systems in place. The first one is site by site reporting, which happens on a monthly basis. The sites are able to capture the volume of waste leaving the site and the destination of this waste, whether it's going to composting anaerobic digestion or animal feed. The second system is our transactional system, in this case we use SAP. This helps us to track what material exactly is being wasted or lost during production, what has been wrongly dosed or spilled, whether it's chocolate or milk. And finally, our third method is the end to end waste mapping that the factories do to locate exactly where along the process the waste is generated. So these three systems help us to have a focused approach to tackling waste, understanding how much is wasted, what exactly is wasted and where along the process this is wasted. Next slide please. So we have a target, we measure a footprint, now we need to act on it. And here I'm going to take you through what we do to eliminate or reduce it, reuse it and recycle it. Our first priority is in fact to eliminate waste source, and we do this by trying to create a change movement, internal movement. We talk about waste to our employees regularly. We talk about commitments, our sustainability commitments overall, but also we train our factory operators on the technologies that they use and how to operate the equipment with the minimal waste generation possible by standard operating procedures. The second topic is data visibility and democratization. We make sure that the waste levels are available and everybody in the company is aware of them. From factory operators to the head of foods and refreshments, nobody is unaware of what our food waste is. And finally we talk of waste for technology, for picking and smart cleaning based on condition based. We reduce waste and wastewater used during the line cleaning procedures. And this is a significant improvement to our previous methods of cleaning. Next slide please. Our next priority is to reuse. How do we do that? We do through innovation mainly. On the slide here you see two examples of products that are created from waste. And there are just two of the money that we have generated, we have created. The cremissima one is available in Germany while the oopsies in the Nordics market in Europe. We virtually save ice cream from being wasted. The products that you see on the slide are also made with 100% recyclable packaging. The cremissima example on the left hand side in specific has been sold by over 1.2 million tubs saving around 160 tons of waste so far. And on top of that it also has a to go to go label making sure that is the first product in Germany to have a guidance to combat food waste on the packaging itself. Next slide please. What cannot be eliminated or reused so far is upcycled. How do we do that? Through partnerships and innovations. On the left hand side you see a fantastic innovation coming from our tea factory in Sri Lanka. Where we're using sludge from the tea factory as a natural dye for textiles. And I have a shirt made from tea hues and I can confirm it looks beautiful and smells amazing. Finally with Vanguard renewables in the U.S. We're supporting a network of unrobbed adjusters generating renewable energy from waste. And we've been doing that for many many years. In the slide there you see a picture of our chunkinator in Ben and Jerry Helendern in Europe as well. I'll hand over back to Teya to talk more about our end to end approach. Thank you very much Marta for explaining what we do in our own operations. If I can have the next slide please. I'm happy to briefly touch on how we work downstream with our customers. The chefs in our Unilever food solution business and with our consumers. Because waste in the food service industries can be as high as 50%. And a huge turnover in these professional kitchens means it's not always easy to see what's being wasted or why. We focused on chefs as they play an important role in reducing food waste in this sector. By helping them to raise awareness on the issue but also by providing training and inspirations. For example in Germany we've teamed up with United Against Waste to raise awareness of food waste and how to prevent it. And we have reached over 30,000 operators in Germany. Our food solution business also teamed up with digital provider Orbisk to deliver a super smart camera and scale to tackle kitchen waste in restaurants. You can see a picture on the slides. The camera and scale sit under an organic waste container and use artificial intelligence to quickly identify and lock every bit of food thrown away. De data helps our food service customers, such as restaurants and hotels, adapt their menus, change their buying patterns to prevent waste and boost profits. We have already helped customers across 30 sites in the Netherlands to have different waste. And this is a nice example of piloting new technology to reduce food waste with our customers. If I can have the next slide. Which is where we explain what we do with our consumers. And we know that over 40% or latest data account even more food loss coming from consumers homes, tackling waste issue on the home front is a priority. Daarvoor, our mayonnaise brand helmets has committed to inspiring and enabling 100 million consumers every year to 2025 to be more resourceful with their food at home and waste less. They provide inspiration and practical solutions, making sure they offer tips on how to transform neglected leftovers into delicious meals. En dat results, not only in helping people make the most of the food in their fridges, but also in enabling them to develop a more responsible consumption pattern. But we also invest in a better understanding on why people waste foods. We have just completed a long and a very large behavioral study into household food waste in Canada. Where helmets discovered that adopting a use update per week, making sure the meals that are of the ingredients that are left in your fridge are used in the meal can really reduce the amount of food thrown away by a third. En this knowledge, this insights in behavior change and understanding consumers and how they deal with food waste is something we will leverage in further work of helmets and we're happy to explain in much more detail what this is all about. So let us now summarize some key elements, some key learnings in our approach. On the next slide please. Marta. Yes, so to summarize our key elements. So in our manufacturing operations, we experienced that the discipline application of the target measure act approach from the champions top on free can make a real difference. It helps us measure and understand precisely where waste occurs, using an externally recognized standard. In bezend de understanding, we can then put specific goals and plans in place against the areas that matter the most. Also creating data transparency for robust measurement and tracking is critical to driver your progress as food waste is often unseen and undervalued. We've also realized that we need to go beyond the numbers and support a shift in mindset and culture in the whole organization. We need people to look at waste with different eyes. We need to see make them see the lost potential and fill the moral and environmental issues that go with it. That is why we started a company movement from supply chain to marketing to sales, where we call upon all our employees to become food waste warriors. We recognize that technology can help us to identify reduce reuse food waste across the whole supply chain. So therefore we seek partnerships with others to pilot explore and implement innovative solutions. In this example I just gave or were working with to good to go. That has developed an app that helps distribute surplus food from stores restaurants, etc. So really working together trying to find innovative solutions and experimenting with them in order to make them scalable and implementable. We also have good experience with public private partnerships and voluntary pledges to address food waste in a number of countries, mentioning UK, Netherlands, but also in Latin American, for example, Argentina. These partnerships allow to successfully leverage the synergies between the different stakeholders that share a common goal. En we should use this to also create a movement in in society. We started to create a movement in our own company, but we need a movement in our society, because we need to have everybody understand the time is now to act. People have reawaken to the value of food over the past years and also for us consumers expect our brands to help them tackle food waste so there is a clear opportunity. Then in closing, I think we would like to states that if we think we can do this alone, we can address this topic alone, we are not ambitious enough. We really need a collective efforts of manufacturers addressing their own operations, but also looking beyond working with retailers, their brands, NGOs, governments and campaigners to really achieve lasting food waste reduction. Let's make sure we create best practice examples and share the learnings, as we have been doing today in this session. Thank you very much. Robert, do we have you with us? How is your connection? Yes, I'm back, I will not switch on my video because I have a bit weak connection, so I hope it will sustain. Can everybody hear me well? Yes. Okay. So, Marta en Thea, thank you very much for this interesting presentation. I think that you clearly indicated to us that reduction of food waste in the business, in the food processing business is directly integrated in the system of total quality management. En both, you explained to us, you both did it internally as well as in the context of the whole supply chain. Internally, for instance, you mentioned that all the workers in the food processing plants are aware of what is at stake and have their own responsibility on the place where they work in order to contribute to an efficient operation. With minimizing food waste. In the context of the whole supply chain, you clearly linking with your suppliers and with your customers. En you also are very well anticipating on the increasing consumer emancipation. Consumers are more aware of what is going on, what is required in the world, and it's nice to see that Unilever is really anticipating on that. And taking action accordingly. We should also realize that for a big multinational, as Unilever, certain things are more easy to adopt and to implement in this respect than for let's say small food processing companies. But that should not discourage anybody because we have to realize that the real approach is indeed to be aware of the issue and implement quality management system. We shouldn't be done by every level of operations. Then we are going to continue with a few questions. My first question to you is just one second. The first question is from the audience from Felicitas Schneider, a well known actor in the whole food waste production setting. And Felicitas is saying thank you very much for the interesting presentation. She's from the Tunin Institute in Germany and she would like to know more from Unilever if there is also a redesign for different packaging. In order to support the emptying of, for example, in mayonnaise and other products from the packaging. Ja, that's an interesting question. We all know that every day that certain products, you cannot really get everything out of the plastic bottle or because the viscosity of the product prevents it from flowing easily out. The question is, if you're working on the design of packaging in order to facilitate the emptying of food products from this type of packaging. Ja, I'm happy to take that question. I might have touched on it already. I think packaging is an important element in Unilever and we address that also from a number of different angles. Also there, we of course want to reduce the amount of plastic waste that goes into the environment, that's one thing. But it can also play a role in addressing food waste. And referring back to the example that was quoted, that is indeed something we are working on. We are trying to see if we can redesign the packaging of the mayonnaise type of squeezie tubes to make sure there's less leftovers working with our packaging suppliers to see what we can do in terms of the materials and the design of the bottles to just make sure we reduce less. Dat is part of what we do. En I think it also illustrates that this is not something where there is just one single solution. And thanks for asking the question because that allows me to elaborate. It's a number of different things that we need to do across the whole chain indeed from the packaging to the product formulation through the processing and everything. But we do address packaging indeed. Okay. Actualy packaging is also the topic of the last session of this webinar, the panel on packaging. Of course, one example of redesign of packaging to facilitate the flow out of product process, what we all know in tomato ketchup and mustard and other products that this design search label that you keep it upside down. So that the product always sinks down to the cap that has to come out. En another question is. Another question for you is what barriers or challenges are you facing to reduce food loss and waste. But can you identify some obstacles that you face when you try to reduce food loss and waste in your operations. Maybe I could start and Marta can build a bit on it, because I think there is a number of different challenges as one would imagine what we saw and that's what we also tried to summarize in the last slide is. We're getting a very clear picture of where your food waste or loss resides, where does it sit. And getting that insight, it may seem trivial, but it's not always easy. So I think something that is the first challenge and I think that's also something where I would like to say that also smaller organizations and manufacturers can take that on board. I don't think a big multinational can do that has all the means, I think everybody can start to look into if I look at my own operations, where does my waist sits. And I think that's the first challenge that we even as a big company work on food waste and counted as well we really needed to get a much better insight across the whole chain, because we had focused very much on our manufacturing operations but across the chain on where the waste set. And then it turned out that also in our logistics, there was a lot to gain. So that's the first one, I think the second one is making sure that the people in your organization are aware that the problem can be addressed. And again, that's not only those at the manufacturing floor, they are playing a critical role because it's important to do your utmost there. We had also basically everybody from the person who designs a product to the person who works with our retailers to sell our products. So it's very much making sure people are aware, because what we found in many cases is that our employees were more worried about the food waste that they were having in their homes. En we're acting on that rather than thinking about what can we do in my work life. So that was one of the things that was an interesting finding and it's really helped us make sure that the understanding is increased across the whole organizations. And those are more the kind of organizational elements, maybe Marty, you can dwell on a bit more challenges we saw in our manufacturing. Ja, sure. In in manufacturing, we have a long track record of actually reducing waste. We started with the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan where we were targeting zero waste landfill in our operations by back then 2020 we reached in 2015. So we do have a lot of success, real success in reducing. But what is very challenging is the last part of the reduction. So once you reduce so far, completely eliminating waste from your operations becomes quite challenging from a technical perspective. What we're doing at the moment is working with our equipment suppliers and waste suppliers to come up with more innovative solutions. For example, in our in ice cream, we are now really working a lot in partnership with our freezer, for example, freezer suppliers to make sure that they work with us on innovative solutions, statistical process control and others to really bring that last piece of waste down. En dat's becoming quite challenging. But we're trying to to come up with innovative solutions. We might have a lot of connection in the meantime, then let me please. Yes, I can hear you again. Okay. Yes Robert, it's fine. There's another question from Felicitas. This is actually something that will be addressed in detail in the panel discussion at the end of the webinar. But I would still like to ask it to the Unilever, because they are not part of that panel. Maybe they can also give an insight. The question is, is there any planning to introduce time temperature indicators or any similar technology in parallel to best before dates on the packaging of your products. Yeah, thanks for the question. And it's a new development that we are closely watching in the whole discussion around best before dates and date labeling. I think there are a number of elements to that. I think if we look at best before dates and use by dates, it's our opinion that we need to make sure that everybody, consumers, particularly understand better what the dates mean. We are not in favor of changing the system because we are quite happy that there is a harmonized global system now in place. So we feel it would add to the confusion if that was going to be changed. But we need to make sure consumers really understand much better what particularly best before dates mean. And we are welcoming collaborations to work together to make sure we have campaigns to create that awareness amongst consumers. One example is too good to go with a campaign of look, taste, smell to make judgment on product where the products can still be consumed. But we feel that across the globe there is room for more collaborations. That's one solution I think in this space. The other is indeed using technology. And we are closely following all the new potential technological elements. I think we will embrace them, but I'm not aware of examples we have in the marketplace already, but we are closely following because that's another way of solutions. And as I said before, we should also use technology and partner with those who deliver those new technological instruments to see if we can reduce food waste. Can I also add, so of course the safety of our consumers and the quality of our products is a first priority. But we also test regularly the quality of our products full time to make sure that the best before date is put correctly. So whenever we need to shift it, so let's say that a magnum started with a six month shelf life and in reality was safe to consume and the quality was an impact a year after its production date. We're very happy to review the best before date to make sure that we don't unnecessarily create food waste. So this is another work stream that is going on on a regular basis, so continuously testing the products to make sure that the best before date corresponds to the real quality and safety of the products. Okay, then the last question I would like to ask is the following. What advice can you give to other companies? And maybe particularly let's say small food processing companies. What advice can you give to them with regard to food waste reduction? What shall be the primary focus? Yeah, I think I'm coming back to what I've said before. I think it's important that each company, be it big or small, starts to look into where does my food waste sit, where do losses sit. Because only then, and might have said it already, only when you measure, you can act on it. So that's something I would really advise every company, but including the smaller ones, because that can work for them as well. Make sure you understand where the losses sit, what happens to it, and then try to set your targets and act on it. And that can be in a tailor made way for your own operations. I mean, that's what will be feasible for your own operations should be decided upon. But it starts with a proper insight in where does it occur. Dan think about how can I act on it? And can I set targets? Because that's also motivational to make sure that you have certain targets in your organization to work towards and can motivate the people towards. En adding on to that, really we believe small action, big difference. So we don't need just a few players to do it perfectly. We need everybody to move on the topic. Everybody can play a role. And what do you say to smaller businesses who say, well, we know that we use about 10% of our product. But if we are going to take all kinds of measures, try to identify where the losses occur, why they occur, and then introduce measures in order to reduce losses, that is going to be more expensive for us than just accepting 10% losses. What do you tell, say to them? Actually, that you'd be surprised by the savings that you can achieve by tackling food waste. And I say it by experience. As I mentioned before, the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan had a target on zero waste reduction, zero waste landfill reduction. When we started, we also feared that we were going to see an increased cost of waste disposal. By putting so much attention and focus on where our waste was going, we managed to save. So by achieving zero waste landfill, imagine in more than 100 countries, we actually ended up saving money rather than spending more. So you'd really be surprised by the savings that you can get by looking at your waste and optimizing your process to avoid waste being generated in the first place. Okay, thanks again. And this will then conclude the first presentation from Unilever. Many thanks to Marta and Teya for this. We are now moving to the next speaker. And that is Mr. Vasili Fokin of he is the Head of Sustainability at Danone in Russia and in the CIS countries, the Commonwealth of Independent States. He will share with us the initiatives and measures implemented by Danone in Russia to reduce food waste. Vasili, please, you have the floor. Thank you very much. Hello everybody. Thank you again for the invitation and thank you for colleagues from Unilever for interesting presentation. Many points which they mentioned are also important for Russia and for Danone. So it's interesting to give a presentation after them. I'll show you a few interesting specific moments which are particularly important for Russia. Let me go to the beginning of my presentation. Yes, and I will start with this slide. This slide represents the amount of waste of different fractions of waste in Russia. You see that amount of food waste and organic waste is almost four times more than, for example, plastic. Why it is important? In Russia particularly and in majority of CIS countries for Soviet countries in focus, we have mostly plastic and non-organic waste. Actually, it's quite popular. We can say that it's so called hype, that everybody is talking about reduction of plastic, about recycling of plastic. Almost nobody thinks about food waste. Why it is so? It happens because on the governmental level, unfortunately there are a lot of missings when we speak about legal perspective, when we speak about legislation and so on. Like a year and a half ago, we did a major analysis on food waste and food losses in Russia with a leading Russian think tank business school Skolkova. It's an open research, but unfortunately for the moment it's only in Russian. It's uploaded on the Skolkova website. And we found out that for sure we have a lot of lacunes here which we need to avoid and to overcome in the future. We started to push the market and other companies and consumers towards this goal. Also we started to discuss this topic with government officials. We also checked where actually food is wasted. Probably all of you or majority of you have seen similar slides, but what actually was quite impressive was for us and for government officials and for market was that more than half of wasted food is actually wasted in retail and on consumers. So again in post-weird countries we almost didn't think about this. And when we calculated these figures, as my colleagues in the firm Univer said that when you know where the food is wasted, you can do something with this. So after we saw this picture, we developed several projects which actually helped us to reduce the food waste and improve the situation. We started communication with market advantages. So we still are communicating what are market advantages of food waste reductions. Of course it's environmental care which is becoming more and more important with sustainability development worldwide and especially in Russia with ESG put it in focus with sustainable development goals. Also it's quite important for improving quality and quantity of the food because it's obvious that if food is not wasted, the quantity of good food becomes more. We can share it, for example. And many, many other advantages which now are a bit more in focus for the market. So what actually Danone is doing and what we started to do after this research. After all, what we're doing with food waste, actually, which is already, which we already have, a different kind of food waste. On our biggest factory near Moscow, we have metanizer. So what does it mean? There's an packing machine which prepares food waste for biogas. And then with metanizer we prepare biogas, which we use then for making a thermal energy. So we actually do the full circle, we can say it, like a circle or economy. And we use it for heating up the territory of our plant. But again, this is only a small part because here we're working with food waste, which already is produced. And we started to think what we can do to avoid this food waste, actually in general. We started communication campaign in social medias that we're responsible for our future, that the world is changing. Again, it might sound quite obvious for western countries. But for specific countries where we have absolutely different topics in focus, like economic crisis, political situation and many other things. This topic is quite unclear for many of customers and government officials and even business companies. So that's why we started from the very beginning saying that it's quite important. We have global changes and so on and so on and so on. And also we connected this with healthy food. Because again, if you're speaking about food waste, you should speak about food in general, about healthy food and health in general. And currently we're rethinking our role and we're trying to make new commitments to carry out the food revolution and revolution in food waste. I should also mention that Russian consumers are quite convinced for the moment that nutrition has a direct impact on human health. So we tried to connect this impact on human health with food waste. And actually we started several social education initiatives, for example in schools. We started a campaign, healthy food from A to Z, which for the moment involves like few, it's like 30,000 children already went to this program. It covers 2,000 schools and even more like 10,000 teachers. And actually it's quite a success. And this program was supported by our Global Foundation Ecosystems, the Non-Ecosystem Foundation. We also started quite interesting campaign and this is our major focus for the moment. It's zero waste leak. What does it mean? Zero waste leak is so-called union from leading Russian and international companies. You see here on the screen that we have Coca-Cola in Russia. We have Mars. We have so well-known companies like ISAC, it's like a teenage union. Fragaria de Matteo, these are leading Russian companies. Kolko, this is a Russian leading university. And Magnit and expat is like country leading retailers with more than few thousand different shops. For the moment we also have Union Russia as a part of our movement. We have some other companies also well-known. So our leak is growing. And what actually we are doing? We are doing the communication campaign and increasing awareness campaign about food waste and importance of zero waste in general. We have Instagram account. We have several campaigns in retail. We made few conferences where we also invited FAO in Russia and actually it had a huge success. We're communicating with government officials showing them that the topic of reduction of food waste is very important for business in Russia and is very important for consumers. So we're talking, we started to talk with the market. We have set the goals for the leak that we should raise public and business awareness. We should jointly promote the necessary for legislative initiatives. As I mentioned previously, we have a lot of legislative law firms in Russia so that we want to change. Also we increase the amount for food sharing. Also many times we mentioned that in Russia we have a quite interesting situation that if you want to share the food for charity, we need to pay several taxes and the price for the food increases up to 40%. Because again the legislation in Russia is unfortunately on the lower level in this field. So with the help of zero waste leak and with the help of non-governmentalization and food banks, we're trying to change this situation and avoid these taxes. Partially we already achieved this goal. In general we reduced waste production, we shared our experience within the leak because again, unfortunately I don't know if it's the same in other countries. When I ask colleagues they're saying that it's vice versa. But in Russia we do not share our best practices so often. So when some company has their good practice on reducing food waste, they do not share it quite widely. So that's why this leak is a point for discussion. We already started some clubs, some streams within the zero waste leak, where we share these best practices. Of course we actively cover the zero waste leak in media. For example, one of the projects which we started already with X5 retail group, again biggest Russian retailer, it's I'm Conscious Initiative in Russia and Tia Sozenay. We encourage buyers to buy more sustainable food. We checked what part of our portfolio we can call sustainable products. It's the products which are more healthy, which are packed in their cycle packaging. And with the help of X5, we are promoting this knowledge for the consumers. And we give some discounts and some benefits if they buy this healthy food. What goal also we have in reducing food waste? But this is more strategic one. We want to eliminate the date of production on the product and leave only expired date. How it might help? Most of you know that in many European countries there is no production date. It's only expired date. And people do not check when the product was actually done. But in Russia, and actually it's like a legacy from Soviet Union, we're trying to buy the product with the newest production date. Because we think that this product is the best one. Of course it's not like this because if we have expired date, the product is quite good until the last day, until the last hour and even more. So that's why we hope that when we achieve this goal and eliminate the production date, it will help us to reduce the amount of food waste which is produced in retail. And you remember that it's almost 30% of the total food waste which is produced. So actually, shortly, these are the initiatives which we are doing for the moment. And if you have some questions, I will be happy to answer them. But again, we're, I can say that in Russia and CIS, in the beginning of this track, but we are developing quite fast. And with each month, the agenda of sustainability and food waste is becoming more and more important. Also with the government officials. Thank you. Thank you to Vasili for this very clear and concise presentation. Very interesting how Danone is addressing the issue in Russia and in the Commonwealth States of the former Soviet Union. I have a question for clarification. Maybe I missed it because of my connection problems, but you gave the example of biogas production, which is not good for the consumption market anymore. But then there is a step of unpacking the product. Wat does it mean? Does this packed product, which is wasted, does it come from Danone's own operations? Or do you get it from your customers, from the retailers? Mostly from our operations. Yeah, thank you for the question. Just to clarify, these are like bad products, which sometimes occurs during the production. And we actually unpack this, but again, it's production mostly. With logistics, it doesn't come to our metanizer. One other efficiency step would be to identify this product waste before you pack it. This is also a challenge that we avoid packaging of some possible food waste. Nou, oké. Nou, voor de rest, I noticed that you take a very integrated approach. You integrate the whole food waste issue in existing campaigns on nutrition and sustainable consumption. And I think that is the right way to do that. You combine this type of thing together and complete message out there to the public and address everything at the same time. Dan, I see there is one question on the chat box from Marina Schubrina from Vienna University in Austria. And the question is, what are the policy options of the Russian government to encourage the retail efforts to reduce food waste? Well, let me just expand it to both to encourage the food industries efforts and the retail efforts to reduce food waste. What are the policy options from the Russian government in this respect? Thank you for the question. And first of all, thank you Robert for this summary. Actually I missed it, but you actually summarized it quite well that for sure when we are working with food waste we're trying to work with each and every step of the circle, both for education campaigns and for production and for communication. So, yeah, actually it's like this. And answering the question, I would say that the best way what the government can do is eliminating these additional taxes. For the moment unfortunately food waste agenda is not so much in the focus of our government officials. As I mentioned, they are mostly discussing like extended producer's responsibility, plastic recycling, packaging, recycling rates and so on. And food waste is like somewhere behind. But again, it's coming back on the focus and also with our help and what we are hoping they will do soon that they will eliminate these additional tax when we give products for charity en this will help dramatically for both retail and FMCG companies. Because for the moment in Russia it's much more costly to share the food for charity. Sometimes it's like seven times more costly if you share the food for charity than if you recycle this. And of course everybody of us understands that the aim of food is to be eaten. So that's why to recycle it it's not the way it should be done. So again, the best possible option from the government will be to eliminate additional taxes for food sharing. Ok, and are you or your initiative that you mentioned? Are you discussing this? Are you in dialogue with the government in order to achieve this? Yes, of course like last year during the pandemic some part of the tax was already like eliminated. It was like for the moment you may not pay part of the taxes if you share the food or different products to the list of organizations which actually are done by the government. In this list for the moment we have like 1000 non-governmental organizations so it's like more than enough none of not all of them are included in this list but still it's like the beginning and for example for us it helped to reduce the taxes which we are paying from 30% to 20% when we do a food sharing. So first step was already done with the help of our working groups so now we want to eliminate this last part, last 20% of taxes. Ok, I have another question apart from this tax issues and so what are the other important challenges and problems that you are facing in the countries where the known is operating to reduce food doesn't waste? I would say that for example we have legislation problems when we want to use food waste for the animal feeding. So for the moment we want to give some part of your possible food waste or the products which expiration date will come soon if you want to give it for animal feeding it's quite complicated and again we have some pilot projects with this not only the known but other companies as well but it's difficult so this is quite a challenge for Russia. What else? It's quite a new initiative but we have many projects like again for pilot projects with insects just to eliminate food waste and to recycle food waste but again the legislation framework is not developed and sometimes we are working in a grey zone where we are doing this and we are wasting a lot of time to discuss different specific issues with our legal departments with government officials and so on so I would say that it's not only taxes but the legislation in general. Oké, Facili, thank you again for your contribution to this webinar and we will see at the later stage after the next presentation there is still some time for more questions and answers from your side. Thank you. Then I'm moving now to to the next speaker and that is Miss Christine Magiero International Market Operations Director at Banfiets BRF which is the largest poultry integrator in food processing company in Turkey. Miss Magiero will speak about how Banfiets achieves zero food loss and waste across their operations. Christine, we are looking forward to your presentation. Thanks. Well, good morning to everyone. It's a pleasure to be here. Good morning to all the participants to all the FAO representatives and really congratulations to the previous presentations that we had because they were very inspiring we could connect most of the actions that we could see there with what I will present here to you also and of course I would like to say thank you for being here in the name of my company representing our teams because this is what you are going to see today. It's part of a teamwork as of course all the other companies are presenting especially the successful activities and projects that FAO is leading not only here in Turkey but all the other markets they really coincide with the commitments that our company also has and that we are in a daily basis working for. So if we look especially to what I'm going to talk today and you can go to the next slide I'm going to present you BRF and Bangit of course to understand properly the commitments and how the sustainability is important for us and the impact that we have the BRF also ESG commitments how we deal with the environment social and governance and how this impact our business and the food loss and weight reduction processes we do have. So when we are talking to about BRF who are we and I'm very proud to say to you that BRF is I'm working here in this company since I graduate and we have as history 86 years and more than 100,000 employees in different countries in different areas 47 production units in the three continents more than 300,000 customers and customers in more than 117 countries and why this is important because the amount and the power that these represent in terms of the food in terms of how much the efficiency is important in our process in the beginning of the chain to the end is what we are in the daily basis looking at and what we are trying to improve from the beginning of the end so we have distribution in more than more than 4 million tons of food and also one very important part of the chain that is our growers more than 10,000 growers if you look from the beginning to the chain to the end there are different parts of the process that we need to look deeper in the approach that we are having about food based and Banvit, who is Banvit Banvit is one arm of BRF here in Turkey that we are very proud to let you know that we have 53 years of story but we joined the BRF family in 2017 we are learning in a daily basis a different part of the process because here in Turkey what is important is that we deal with the fresh market and dealing with the fresh market is again another challenge regarding the chain itself because the temperature and the quality control inside our processes is something very very important to be able to avoid the food losses that is the main part of our speech today here we we develop our strategies actually to connect every single dot of our chain and be commited with everything so when we look to the BRF protagonism and the commitments that we have in the ESG you can link here in this slide our initiatives the commitment between the FAO also so what we are focusing we are focusing developing the partners in the community so having a close connection educational programs to avoid and especially regarding the food loss to be connected with people educating them and even connecting with the cultural aspects that the food itself represent and the losses represent also promoting knowledge and the innovation so achieving and focusing in the innovation is a very important part of the process because throughout innovation and is not only disruptive innovation but is including in our processes best practices that we could understand all over the countries and all over the processes and in these kind of forums that we are here today we can also innovate and we can have savings and we can connect with the commitments in general another we have different whatever we are having in the countries regarding the activities about sustainability we are trying to spreading out also in the different areas and animal welfare because we are coming from the beginning of the chain producing the animals is also one important commitment because once you have animal welfare in your agenda this is something that can decrease the damages of the carcasses that we are bringing to the slaughterhouse but not only because of this because we care about what we are producing and the quality of what we are delivering also of course being plural and diverse this agenda is very important for us and preserve the environment because no matter what to produce we need to be careful about what kind of resources we are using and using carefully the resources and recycling and trying to put in our process also this agenda is another commitment that we also have about trainings, about policies about solid communication plans with all our stakeholders from the growers to the workers and to our clients is an important task also that we are focusing on you can go ahead and again we care for the whole planet and everything our part that is committed to be able to reach all that we are working on so we are a member of the UN global compact network in Brazil we are committed in these meetings in this participation in a representative in Brazil also and you can see that out of the 17 commitments that FAO has we are engaging 14 of them in this agenda that I just explained to you so focusing on animal welfare food waste, grain stressability energy, water communities, packaging diversity and especially in this cycle connecting our people about culture and engagement bringing this building together the culture and reaching all the levels of our people is also one important task for us, why because once you understand that food waste is something important not only for the planet but for what you are giving as an example to your family to your teams and to the people that you are connected to we can engage much more people because it's about what they are feeling not only about what they are doing and if we take a very quick look in our implementations like I said before we have some specific losses going throughout the agricultural business I think I didn't said but I was supposed to say that 13.8% of the food losses we get in the agricultural business lab and this means that this food is unfortunately wasted before being offered for consumption and in this way we are happy and proud to offer 100% of the food we produce for consumption in 2020 for example we produce more than 373.000 tons of food in all ours water houses here in Turkey just for you to have an idea Turkey represents 10% of what we produce globally en we we are very proud to say that we get these zero food lost across all our teams and maybe you can question how do you get zero food loss especially because we also question ourselves and especially because we know that there are lots of challenges all the time and our production actually starts from the grace and as I told you the animal welfare is one very important test because once you have quality in what you are delivering you can bring to the production better carcasses and you can have yield improvements so when we are talking about processing specifically yield is our main test why because once we have high yields we have lower losses and we can deliver and produce in a very good way so how you can achieve yield very good in your processes especially having high quality standards in the process and we have actually labs not only labs regarding the animal part but regarding the inside the process and we are handling more than 44.000 analysis per month this is very important because once we are monitoring what you are doing you can be sure that these analysis prevent low quality raw materials and low quality production and also trainings twice a year we carry out food safety and quality trainings and to prevent food waste that may raise because of the food safety risks of course thanks to our traceability system we track our production until they reach our consumers therefore we prevent food waste whatever happens during this journey as I told you the temperature is one of our big questions in one of our big aggressors inside our process we can track our our Trusts from the beginning to the end and during all the process and of course when you look inside the process and the precinct before also brought this topic for us De management tools, they are very important to the process. So when you talk about PDCA and SDCA, that for us is one management tool that we use to solve problem and to standardize the process, to reduce losses, to find the gaps, to decrease the losses, also the quality circles, why the quality circles are important because you involve people from the base. You put people the blue colors, for example, engage in finding opportunities in every single part of the process and bringing alternatives to you. Also the 5S application. 5S application, we started and we are having everything that I'm talking to you. Even if we start, we are facing in a daily basis different opportunities because this is something that you implement and you need to check, you need to audit and you need to every time keep moving this circle in a positive way to find more opportunities and to reduce in a daily basis. So the 5S also, because if you have a proper environment to work, you have better way to produce and to reduce the losses. Anyway, what is important to say here is that we are engaged, we are training people, involving people, doing our best practices and finally last year we received a zero waste certificate issued by the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization in two of our facilities here in Turkey, Bundermanismir and Inismir Feedmeal also and we aim to include our other slaughterhouses here within the scope of this certificate for 2021. And if we, if we talk about zero food waste, why this is possible? Because when you are not talking about the products that are going to the, to our retail to the markets, no matter what kind of market, you are, we are talking about using the industrial waste waste to also with all quality standards, how high quality standards to produce in our rendering facilities, we have rendering plans in all our units. And this can contribute, as we, we heard before also, to the nutrition of other animals, like the companies that produce fish meal or pet food. And these protein meals were produced, they also need, as I told you, high quality standards and need to be purchasable by the consumers. So this is the way also that we are using and we are allowed to allow it to put this zero waste process in our, our processes. Of course, as I told you in a daily basis, we are committed to improve and increase to also reduce all of these, but this is the way we are doing. In terms of food losses also what is important is, as I mentioned to you before, that we deliver to all our sales points in our, in our facilities here in 69 of the warehouses that we have in the country in a daily basis, right. And as I told you, the temperature is our main problem. Why? Because this can spoil our products in a, in a fastest way. And again, then we are talking about food losses. And that's why we are so committed in our traceability system. And we are focusing on it. And going through the next, the final slide of my presentation, from these warehouses, we deliver to our sales points. And we have more than 800 refrigerated minivans. And we do this in a daily operation, as I told you. And again, it's not easy. We have, from 10 to 12 hours, from the slaughter facilities, from the shelters before 6 a.m. in the morning, the trucks reach our branches, distributors and warehouses. And from the beginning to the end of the chain, we are committed with the quality of our process, the training part of people, the having this clarity for all the participants that the more we are engaging the cost, the more we are connected to the cost, the more we will be able to fight against the food losses. Our goal, of course, to finalize, is to increase our contribution, both for a more sustainable production and for a more liveable work for the next generation. And thank you very much. I will give my best regards for all of you and hope to see you soon and increase our exchange of information. I took notes of some opportunities that I saw also in the previous presentations here because our life is like this. Thank you, Robert. Back to you. Thank you very much, Christine. This is very impressive. Having worked myself at some point my life in the meat industry, I know that this is probably the most difficult part of the food industry, because the perishability is high, the safety requirements, the regulations are extremely high. Most are very high and you are making fresh products, as a matter of fact, not processed or sterilized products. And that makes it very difficult to keep the quality and to keep zero food loss and food waste. But I would like to, if you allow me, ask you one question about that, because you understand that of course poultry chicken, they have many parts which are not intended for human consumption, the non-addable parts like the intestines and the feet and I don't know what. En you send them, I understand, to the non-food sector, like the fish meal industry or animal feed or other examples, I think you mentioned. But does it not happen at all in your operations that sometimes also parts of the product of the produce which was intended to go for human consumption, that you have to send it to the non-food sector, because something went wrong. I don't know if I got clearly your question Robert, but the point here is, what is not going for the consumers point of view, we are processing in our render. This is the main point. Our rendering facilities cook, what is the same as we saw before. And then we produce this as a meal and this meal is going to feed itself of the fish and the pets and other alternatives. By the way, this is a very good mark. In the other hand, when we are talking about specific, we are working in collaboration with different sectors and we are starting these also not only about education, about starting from the kids to educate them better, but also about the food waste itself in our retailers, as we were saying, because we know that we have an expiration date, expired dates in our products and this is as were also our previous speakers told about. It's very important for us making this control, because in the end of the day, you spend the energy, you spend time, you spend effort, you spend technology producing something that is very good, but in the end, if you lose and the data that Vasili showed us is very interesting, you lose everything from the beginning. And we are working very close to these, the retailers actually, to not only monitor, but to find alternatives like the food banks and everything to be able to reduce actually from the beginning to the end, what is good and what is not used for food in taking general in our rendering systems. Okay. Well, thank you again. We are now moving on to the next speaker and I'm happy to introduce Miss Selma Setic. She's the co-founder and owner of Instock. And Instock is a company in the Netherlands that creates a business out of food waste. So let's find out more from Selma. The floor is yours. Thank you Robert. Thank you very much. Nice to meet you all. In the meantime, when the slides could be put up, I'll briefly introduce myself. My name is Selma. I started working at Aho Hotel Heus after I finished my studies, which is the largest food retailer in the Netherlands, but also a global player. And when I started working, I was first in sustainability where I was confronted with the numbers on food waste. And a year later, as part of the graduate scheme, I also worked in the supermarket store, where I was actually quite surprised to see what kind of food was wasted and also how good a lot of the quality of the products was that we had to remove from the shelves at the end of the day. So, for example, fruits and vegetables with a little stain or a complete bread department. So it actually got me thinking what we could do about this issue. We can proceed to the next slides. This was me when I was really young. It's already seven years ago in the next slide. Yes, so then together with a few colleagues, I decided to enroll in an innovation competition, which was organized by Aho's. And we actually came up with the idea to start a restaurant, a pop-up restaurant only for five months with the initial plan, with products from the supermarket that we couldn't sell at the end of the day. Next slide, please. And as you can see in the previous photo, we won that competition and we actually were granted the opportunity to open the restaurant. And as soon as we opened our doors, we realized that there was a lot of interest also from the public and media. Seven years ago, the topic of food waste was not so much out there. I think a lot more awareness has been created. But it was actually a very nice place where people could come together, where we could explain what the reasons were for food waste in the whole food supply chain, where we could upcycle the food into delicious meals and products. And over the last seven years, we actually did a lot of stuff within stock. So we gave so many presentations. We made a lot of circular products, which I will tell you a lot more about. And now we also started a food wholesale business for other restaurants and caterers to provide them with the products that we rescue. Next slide, please. So this is our restaurant in Amsterdam, here on the terrace. Next slide, please. And a lot of people ask us how we run a restaurant based on Food Surplus. Well, as you can understand, Food Surplus is actually very volatile. So our chefs, the ones who work with us, need to really use their creativity to turn the food that we rescue into delicious meals and products. What we see is that there's a lot of different reasons for food waste. So there is food waste at different points in the food supply chain. And where we first started working with supermarkets themselves, we slowly moved our sourcing a lot more to producers, farmers, because we realized that the logistics were actually less complicated. And next slide, please. And so if you see, for example, the pineapples here that we rescued from the port in Amsterdam, broader them, and next slides. We turned that, for example, into a delicious drink, a tapache, which is a fermented drink made with the skin of the pineapples. Next slides. En dat also brought us to think, hey, can we also not produce more drinks, not only in our own restaurants, but also produce products with a longer shelf life to expand our impact and also sell those drinks in other places such as retailers. And since in the Netherlands we are huge fans of potatoes and bread, and therefore also wasting a lot of these products we started with the potatoes that you see here. Next slide. And we got into a conversation with a brewer in Amsterdam, who actually wanted to also start this adventure with us to brew beer with potatoes. We had to test a variety of different recipes, because it was not so easy. But how we came about is that we removed some of the molds en we replaced it with the potato. And with this you actually have a more hoppy flavor, because the potatoes are quite neutral of taste. And we created this pill, it will be here with the potatoes that we basically rescue. Any other beer that we then produce next slide, please, is made with surplus bread. Also bread is one of the products that is wasted a lot. And this next slide is another beer, which is more white beer. Here is kind of the same concept. We remove a little bit of the malt and replace it with bread. And therefore we can really show how you can actually upcycle certain product streams and create really nice new products, which are also marketed in a way that it becomes more accessible to a wider public. Oftentimes food waste is also a niche or something that not everybody is aware of, but we really want to make it mainstream, because only then are we able to also make our targets to have food waste by 2030. Next slide, please. So when we started brewing, we really got more and more into the topic. And what we realized is that our own brewer also had to deal with a byproduct of the brewing process. You basically need four ingredients to make beer, which is the yeast, the hops, the molds and the water. And the byproduct at the end is actually very nutritious. It's called spent grain. And what happened in the process of fermentation is that the sugars have turned into alcohol. So what is left is actually a very nutritious, protein-rich and fiber-rich product. Next slide, please. And this brought us also to the concept of making this breakfast product. This is a granola. We add flavors by adding nuts, chocolate, honey to make it delicious. And I think this is also a good example of really thinking creatively. What can you do with certain products that you see are wasted en how can you make sure that you extract as much value from those byproducts as possible? Next slide, please. So here, you really see the circular economy at work. We are very much inspired by the circular economy. How can we extract the maximum amount of value and really make sure that by using these fermentation techniques, you can actually prolong the shelf life of these products en therefore create more time. Because time is very scarce when you're dealing with food waste. A lot of the food that we rescue, it's perishable goods. You need to be quick. And by making products, we really are able to give us a little bit more time. Another fun fact is that on all our products, we don't indicate an expiration date. I know that we are legally allowed to have an expiration date, but we call that on purpose a delicious until date. It is a little extra gimmick how we try to create more discussion or more debates about this topic, because we all know that it was also one of the reasons why a lot of consumers waste food at home. Next slide, please. And this is an important graph for us. We always look at the waste hierarchy in order to see how can we extract as much value as possible from the food surplus streams that we encounter. And as you can see, prevention is on top of this waste hierarchy. So wherever we are dealing or seeing food surplus streams, we always see other people creating the stream able to solve it themselves. Because that would be best for us. You actually are a business in business, that we would prefer to be out of business since we are a social enterprise. So that's really is always the first thing that we look at. But if we see that that is not possible, we try to make sure that we can upcycle the streams for human consumption. If that doesn't work, then a lot of food can go into animal feeds, or even though we're on the waste hierarchy, making energy or composting products. Next question. I'm sorry, next slide. And how we see ourselves growing in the future We want to make more impact going forward is really to scale the operations of our bolseel in stock markets. We have a food rescue center just outside of Amsterdam, where we collect all the food surplus streams that we collect from farmers, from producers, from packaging companies. And when the food is brought into our rescue center, we check it for quality. But we also repackage this for the hospitality industry, mostly restaurants, catering companies. And yeah, we basically use creativity, not only of our own chefs from our own restaurants, but also from a much larger community. Next slide, please. And this is the online shop. Next slide, please. Where we try to create more awareness is also with our books because we know that a lot of food waste occurs in people's homes. So our first cooking book, instant cooking, is really focusing on conserving techniques, so from smoking, dry, fermenting, in a very easy and simple way. It's playing to people at home how they can reduce the food waste in their own houses. Circular chefs with our second book, where we've focused more on the community that we're trying to build now with instant markets, is really seeing, okay, how can you as a professional chef in your own operations really reduce the waste you have? So in this book, five principles are explained so that, yeah, we can really enlarge the movement and fight food waste at a larger scale. Next slides. So what have we learned over the last five years? Just to sum up the presentation, I think it is very important to approach everything from a positive angle. We're dealing with a very huge issue, climate change and hunger. But at the same time, if you want to change something, people are more attracted to positive things in the world. So making sure that the products look fun, that the restaurant is a nice place where people want to come, all increases the rates of success. Also think big, smart, start small, coming from a huge organization, knowing that there is a lot of impact to be made if you work on such a huge skill. Sometimes if you want to do something very radical or innovative, it is sometimes nice to just make it first very small, just create the product, find your first buyer to really get the ball rolling, create a team with complementary skills. Also very important, as you can see, we have done a number of things from hospitality, to product development, to wholesale. We really need to have a big variety of people working together with us and of course the financials. I mean, we are a social enterprise driven with a mission. We have been an independent organization already for a few years. And as much as we are in business to change an issue, it is also important to be able to pay the bills. And last but not least is also collaborations. We work together with a lot of organizations in the Netherlands. Also with companies like suppliers in the supply chain. Also with, for example, Unilever, Ahold, the big retailers. But also smaller farmers, big catering companies. But also other people suggest to go to go. So the collaborations are very important to make this problem smaller. Thank you very much. This was actually my presentation. Are there any questions? Yes, Selma, thank you as well. This is really interesting. And of course, this is like your business instructors operating like an extension of the food processing industry or other sectors in the food supply chain, where you take on foods which is wasted or foods which is not fit for human consumption anymore or is at a risk to get wasted. You take it on and you process it again into something else which is still suitable for human consumption. But then I would like to ask if in this process, reprocessing of the food products, if there you again incur food waste or food losses or is that because of the nature of your business it can always be automatically recycled to the beginning of your chain and used again. So I think when we're looking at the restaurants we rescue a lot of food and in our operations in the restaurants we are working a lot to reduce our own waste there by for example being open seven days a week. But also if we always do them in some plus basically ahead so we do a breakfast lunch dinner and any other surplus drinks are also reused into the meal for our own employees. In our food rescue center so behind the scenes in the operations logistics we donate around 20% to everything we rescue to social initiatives such as the food banks. Of course there we encounter the same issue that supply and demand are not always 100% matched. And when we're looking into the production of our food then actually the granola is the example of how we then try to reuse the byproducts of the brewing process. Okay, what would you say are the most effective products or initiatives that you take which is the most promising but that gives the best results and that you identify any key learnings from this business while implementing these initiatives. I think the problem with food waste is that it occurs in so many different forms and shapes at so many different places in the supply chain and in so many different quantities en in so many different important elements that it is actually very difficult to come with a one size fits all solution. I really think that the whole industry has to see okay where can we make one step up this waste hierarchy so with every single surplus drink you see how can you extract more value from it. I think that is very important in general and then overall I would say in our own operations when people come and have dinner or food when they actually eat the food then it is a lot more efficient than when we make the beers because there it's still a drink a lot of water is added so if we want to really make more impact we really in our own operations believe that growing and scaling the wholesale business in hospitality is a lot more impact than opening 100 restaurants under the instock label. We really are in business to make sure that we can increase our impact and also that we can do it quicker. That was also one of the reasons that why we had when we opened three restaurants in the Netherlands we decided to go online into online wholesale really because we thought we could scale quicker and make more impact quicker. And the hospitality industry is a very interesting industry because they are less bound to strict regulations. Producers always need to have their food labeling in order. They have very strict quality departments checking on every single ingredient. All the recipes need to be checked, need to be tested etc. Whereas in hospitality we have the opportunity to work with chefs who are professionals who are really on top of food safety. We are also able to act quick and they are their decision makers themselves. So the biggest customers that we're working with are for example the catering companies in-house of huge large organizations, banks, consultants, firms and yeah there's hundreds of people working there. They all have lunch there so if you have a salad bar it doesn't really matter if there is no regime of a courgette grilled that day. It's really about using the creativity and thinking smart to basically go against the volatility in the food waste streams. I have another question from Leromeyes who is with the Israeli mission to the United Nations in Rome. And the question is you mentioned that it is important for you to reach as many people as possible. Now what about the price of the products? Do you manage to keep it attractive to customers? It is very important to compete on price with similar products in the product category. We also were trying to make jams and chutneys and other products with the surplus streams but we realized that we were not competing with other products in the markets and then we also realized that it was not successful. So one of the reasons why we made beer and the granola onion or why they made it as products that also went onto retail shelves is really because we could hit the price point where we could compete with A-level, A-brand prices. And I think prices are the same as the marketing needs to be as good as the marketing of your competitor. So people are not really willing to compromise anywhere just because it's more sustainable product. It really needs to be, you really need to just step up your game and really do your best to compete on every single level. And otherwise it also fails. So there's a lot of products that we tried to make which didn't make it such as the chutneys, the jams, the chips. We were also too small and we couldn't really get to a level of skill where we could actually get the right price points. We have a few very interesting questions that come to my mind that unfortunately we don't have time for again for your contribution. En I hope that it will be in the near future where we deserve to work together. Okay, then now we go to the last session of this webinar which is the panel discussion. And this question will talk about the ways of packaging. I'm not hearing anything. Yes, the sound is not very good. Robert, can you try to say something again? I'm afraid we may have lost Robert. So, Robert, no? Okay, let us then move on to the panel discussion on food packaging and the solutions of packaging as a means to prevent and reduce food waste. So we'll have three participants and I would be delighted to introduce them. We have Angelica Christ, the industry expert and former secretary general of the European Federation of Corrigated Board Manufacturers. We also have Eric Manson with us who is the CEO of Innocentia, which is the developer of the sensor-based labels that help prevent and reduce food waste. That's an impact solution and Eric will be telling more about this. En, of course, we have Ufer Todun Panwelsen. I hope I pronounced everything well. And he's the senior scientist and packaging technology and recycling at Wageningen University and Research. And Robert, we have you back. At least I can hear you. Can you hear me? No, no. Yes, yes. I've made introductions. If you want to add anything. Yes, I heard everything. Okay, otherwise... I'll move on to questions. Yes, thank you, Oksana, for introducing the panel members. So we're going to ask you a few questions and we are interested in your answers and see how the different panel members have different experience and views on the topics that we are talking about. So my first question is for Angelica. What is your view on how food packaging industry is developing? Is there a particular interest in the solutions to enhance food preservation? Do you see any... I'm not hearing you anymore. Progress in this area and other major food waste. Well, I think I only heard part of the question, but I have a faint idea of what you were asking. So let me answer to what I felt is important. First of all, I would like to congratulate the companies that have presented so far. I think it's a big, big success that the view on food waste is now very holistic and not anymore related to very single issues. And I was really impressed about the presentation and what is being done in the food industry. And packaging plays a rather big role. Although you heard it very often mentioned, packaging isn't an abler. It enables things to go from one point to the other. And it's a multitasker. And at the same time, forgive me for the expression, it's also an oh shit product. Oh shit, I forgot. Very often in the companies and the food industry, you are developing new products. And then at a very late stage, you bring in the packaging. And that's something from the view of the point of view of the packaging industry. That should be changed. We would like to be part of the process very beginning on. I have three points I would like to make. One is the political scene, the green deal, circular economy and related discussions. All increase the pressure on players to act sustainable. Food waste is part of that. But the issue of food waste is profiting from the discussion. But it's not in the core focus at the moment. In de moment, we have recycling. We have single use plastics. We have micro plastics and so on. But still packaging, food packaging and food waste is profiting from it. And packaging is critical and enables solutions to prevent food waste. First of all by its mere existence. Just imagine yourself bringing eggs home from the farmer. In your arms, you have a high chance that from the dozen of eggs that you are carrying in your arms, at least four will fall down and be destroyed. So by having a packaging for the eggs, the discussion and store preserves we have clever solutions nowadays, functional packaging. And I think we'll hear more from Erik and Oepard on that. And then there is an issue where I think rather critical and also address the food industry, the portioning of packaging is still too big. I think in the supermarkets we should have much more packaging aiming at single households. We have an increasing number, at least in Western Europe, on single households. So the food industry should much more take care of that and produce smaller packaging. And the last point I want to make is a very simple one. We all are suffering from corona. We are sitting here on the web conference because of that packaging safeguards, food quality and hygiene conditions on the supply chain and a lack of packaging from that point of view puts society as a whole at risk. So let me finish here. I think my other panelists will have to say something as well. Ja, thank you Angelica. I have a question also for... Hearing again. For Eric now. We know that in a sense like intelligent packaging that helps prevent food waste. Could you tell us more about that please? Ja, exactly. So hi everyone. My name is Eric. I'm the CEO of a Swedish company called Innocentia. So what we are developing is a way to actually help the end consumer to waste less food. So as we've been discussing here in the meeting today, we do have the expiry date system which is sort of fairly well constructed in helping us understanding for how long the products will actually last. But there are also a few sort of weaknesses with the systems which entails, for example, large safety margins set by the producers. One of the reasons for that is that they have to calculate sort of an average for all the packages they produce in a batch and set the best before date for that, for those, for example. But that means that these safety margins, they result in that a lot of products that we actually throw away at expiry dates have additional shelf-lives in it and research show that throwing away at the expiry dates is one of the big reasons to why we waste food. So we want to help the end consumer with that en we do it with technology. One way is to educate them and make sure they smell and taste and sort of can assess the product. But we can also see a growing generation now that doesn't want to use their senses when doing these assessments and what would much rather trust technology. So we're developing technology, sensor technology that is the base of our labels. The labels are actually introduced in the package and they measure the gas levels in the package. We specialize in fresh meat at this point and in the degradation process of that fresh meat. You can measure the gas levels and actually say something about whether or not the product is good to eat at a certain point. So when a product reaches its expiration date, for example, or when it's very close to expiration dates, you can use our labels to actually assess the status of the food and then do a correct choice of whether you would eat it or not. So that's the basis of what we do and what we develop. And we do this in two ways. One is with analog. So it's a label that changes color. So you can see with your bare eyes and we also do and develop a digital version. I can come back to that. Thank you Eric. This is very interesting. Now I would like to ask Ulfacht. How do you look at packaging innovations and are they really proving to be applicable and efficient in reducing food based or do you also see limitations? And if you see limitations of food packaging in this respect, what would be your suggestion how to go about it? Thank you for the question Robert. Also thank you Angelica and Eric for your contributions. It's very clear and very to the point. Packaging innovation is hampered by disinterest. So indeed Angelica put it correctly. Oh shit, we have to develop also a package at the end a few days before introduction often. This is the first thing that struck me when I started with it work in the 90s. Yes, we have developed all kind of concepts active, intelligent, whatever over the past 20 years. We tested them, but a package should be that cheap. Refer me less than one euro. Secondly, it should promote the product. So it should have flashy ads en it should stick out on the shelf. The package is the silent salesman. Thirdly, it should be food safe. Fourthly, it should perform top. So it should do maximum protection for as little as possible money. And it should all be simple work on the machines etc. This load of performance issues indicators that have where a package has to deal with makes it very difficult to innovate packaging. So even reasonable, reliable time temperature indicators and reasonable good intelligent packages that we developed in the 90s en in the 90s have not made it to the market because of the shitload of demands that are placed on the package. Now, since roughly five years, a new theme has come on, the plastic littering of our oceans. And this has sparked a lot of governments to place correctly, I will agree, a new single use packaging regulations and new packaging waste regulations on the market. And that is changing our world rapidly. So certainly no package is felt to be better than a package. And my main worry is that all the good work that we have done to protect food and build our societies with packaging as an enabler will partly be lost in the near future because people simply want to abolish package. It doesn't matter if it has a function. It doesn't matter if it reduces food waste. We want to get rid of plastic point and of discussion. And we prefer to use paper with fuss or other chemicals of persistence and a spoiler nature instead. So yes, packaging innovation is very difficult. Some products have made it to the market. And that's great. It's always about money. It's always about performance. It's always about a whole lot of demands. And so it's always a very troubled relationship. The only packaging innovation that I was part of that went super, super, super fast was when we had an animal high health crisis in the Netherlands in 1999 with the BSE crisis. Within two years, all the meat companies changed over from packaging in air. So with a styrofoam tray with a PVC stretch wrap to modify that to serve packaging. And this was a package that was about 7 euro cents per package at more expensive. But it brought them, they learned during the way 10 to 20 euro cents a gain in less weight of food being wasted, less meat being wasted and hence less cost. That's the only thing that really worked. But it started off by a zoonlogical pandemic called an animal disease. So that started it off. And sometimes you need a good crisis to change something in this world because otherwise nothing happens. Robert, do we have you with us? Still? Interrupted, we cannot hear you well. Okay, let me then maybe if you allow me to ask a question to Angelica, please. Thank you very much. You already covered some points, but would you maybe elaborate a little bit and speak a bit more about the available packaging solutions that in your experience help to prevent and reduce food waste? Would you be able to share some examples? Well, I think there are many, many examples on the market already. The functional packaging means you kind of control the oxygen in the product in order to prevent the food waste because oxygen is what increases the spoilage. You have aromabaric biological approaches that all has to do with the chemical packaging. We need to have certain materials included in there. I'm not a chemist, so I'm not that depth in it. But I think I'm not as pessimistic as Ulford was in his speech. I think a lot has been done, especially concerning the shelf life because that's where real money is. Of course, everything is money driven. And in the shelf, if you increase the shelf life and also the time in the fridge that a product can survive in a good condition, that means real money. And so the same appeals to resealing. If you buy nowadays packed cheese, very rarely that you can't reseal the product anymore. I think there is a lot of products on small scales, but especially these two phases where really missing the proportioning. I think that not enough small sizes available in the market, at least not in where I live. And I think too much emphasis is put on recycling in comparison to the protection of the packaging. Of the product, sorry. And what you also have to consider when you lose a product with a packaging, the damage in resource waste is high. When you increase the stability of the little bit, you won't lose as much of the saving to also its pure money. En I think whenever you can applicate the whole issue to money, that's what we learned from our last speech as well. Then it motivates people much better. It's not on, of course, food waste is a moral problem as well. But it's also a financial issue. Thank you very much, Angelica. That's also very interesting to hear you. You have a rather positive view on this and especially on the technologies. And speaking of which, I would like to ask also Erik maybe to share what in his opinion made in essential work. Because as Uffert mentioned before, indeed there are many innovations and solutions that do not reach the market for various reasons, including the cost and efficiency ratio. So would you be able to tell us how did you ensure that this is both efficient, that it's applicable and that it's feasible to produce and use what is your success secret? Ja, I can't really say that it is a success yet. We're still in the pilot phases. And I agree both with Uffert here and Angelica. We need to be realists. We need to look at this from a perspective where we sort of fulfill all the requirements set by the market. But I think that we are playing into a few of these points that has been mentioned. First of all, it needs to be financially viable. And that's one of the reasons why I don't think we have seen any of these sensors applied on the market yet. They have been too expensive. And that's one of the things that we have managed to do with our technologies to create these at a very low cost, which means it is actually possible to introduce them to the sort of full package. And then it has to be something that adds value to the producer who has to take the cost for it. And probably we have had a climate where we haven't been able to sort of raise the value of your products by adding these anti-food waste labels, for example, or other types of products. But what we see now is consumers who are concerned about the levels of food waste, the sustainability values, en could pay more for products that clearly communicates that they are adding to these values. And that's something that we've seen on the Nordic markets when we do studies and something that we heard about on the global market as well. And then lastly, I think it's all about sort of ensuring the stability of the technology. And we have reached a point now where we can reproduce these types of sensors to a point where we can guarantee that they work time after time so you can actually trust them in a better way. So yeah, we're coming from a situation where probably this hasn't been possible yet, but where we believe it will be possible in a very close future. If we meet all of these requirements set by the market and the demand for it is created as we speak from the customers who are getting more and more aware for everyday. Thank you very much, Eric. That's very interesting. And we also hope that more and more similar solutions will be appearing that will be meeting all the criteria and that will be on the market soon. So we are happy to provide the platform and help you showcase your solutions. So please keep us in the loop on how it progresses and develops and we will be happy to share the progress with the market and with our partners and stakeholders. I would like to ask maybe Angelica and Ulfart if they have anything to add before we proceed with some closing remarks. And I know that there is one more speaker that wanted to add something. That's Christine, but before that I would like to still give you a chance to add on the topic Angelica Ulfart, if you have anything, please. Well, I would like to quote something. It's from an American publication from what is it, REFET. It's an American organization and it's one sentence I picked out of a paper from there which I would like to quote as a last word. The issue of packaging is an issue of food waste and then the issue of food waste is an issue of fight and focus on the balance. Last word and I think that's very appropriate. Thank you very much Angelica for that quote. It was a bit difficult to hear due to the sound issue. But I think I got it. I'm very happy if Eric has innovated so far with his company to a intelligent consumer package that has his function below 1 eurocent. That would be great because I haven't seen that and I've been part of many alternatives where we quote, the food came for free with it. So the package was already 5 euros per package. And then we had the joke, you get the chicken or the fish free with the intelligent package. And that's of course absolutely a no-go situation. So apparently there has been progress and that's very important. But still there are major obstacles for Eric to come on the market to be successful. And I hope he succeeds. I generally hope that don't get me wrong on this. This food safety barrier, this recycabilities barrier, et cetera. And sometimes it feels like a packaging developer, like I am, that during the course your barriers are always placed ahead of your additional. So that you think, oh, I'm almost there and somebody in the management thinks, oh, but we also have to have it recycable. Oh, no, we also have to have it, et cetera. But I hope Eric succeeds. In the end, I hope that food waste becomes visible. That would make such a major difference because packaging plastic waste is visible everywhere. And that's why it's a major topic. Food waste is not visible for many people. And that's why it's not on the radar. And the only thing we can change that is making people aware and showing them the environmental impacts of food waste. That's something I hope we can contribute to in the near future to make that change. And also the major decision makers in the food industries, in the fast-moving consumer food industries to make them aware that it's first food waste then packaging waste and not reversed. But that is a very difficult message. But I hope we succeed. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Bert. That was all very interesting and very valuable. Thank you for your thoughts for sharing, for being open and honest in expressing yourself. That's very much appreciated. I don't know if Robert is back or not. Otherwise I would like to ask Christine to add one more point which she wanted to as regards her presentation, the one that she made earlier because we don't have much time left before closing this, Christine. Thank you very much, Oksana. Actually it's just one point to reinforce here because sometimes using in a very proper way our natural resources is a big concern also especially because we have operations in countries where water scarcity is a big thing. And when I share our commitments about our environmental part I would just like to reinforce that the water reuse recycling and the optimization of saving water in our processes is one of our main commitments regarding the environmental part. And not only this but also sources of clean energy in our processes. So we are very proud also to have in the international markets not only here in Turkey the recycling water use in our process in Bandirma facility but in the Emirates also 100% of the water reusable during our processes. So when we are talking about the change from the beginning to the end I just would like to add these because it's very important to reinforce the animal part, the process part, the packaging part and the connection and the interdependence that we should do in the process and then with all the stakeholders that are committed in the parts of the process. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Christine. Thanks a lot. We have one more question to Eric but I don't know Eric if you would like to answer it very briefly because we don't have much time or if you would then contact Ilona and let him. We can take it. I give it a try to be swift. Sorry, Ilona, she's from the University of Ljubljana and she's asking if you could comment on the environmental footprint of technological solutions themselves. Do you have any data on this? Okay, so the environmental footprint. So yeah, differences a little bit from sensor to sensor. Our sensors are mainly chemical based so our analog sensors are created with organic ingredients and chemically based so to say and then constructed as one of the labels that we would use today in food packages. So we wouldn't have a changing environmental impact to the kind of labels we're already using today. When it comes to electronics, if you're going to create something that is digital that is a completely different question and I think that's one of the biggest obstacles for us and many with us to be able to create sensors that can interact digitally with the systems that we have to provide the information about the food status in real time. We need to find better solutions for creating them in a sustainable way in an environmentally friendly way. We are now looking at, for example, printing parts of our system with carbon. I know that that's a technology that is developing but there's still a way to go there because before we can actually have and more environmentally friendly produced labels in a digital way. So I think the questions or the answer is that there are solutions already existing right now but there's still a way to go if we're going to create digital versions that are possible for high scale. I would say. That's the short answer. That's a good question. Thank you, Eric. Thanks a lot. Now let me please check if Robert has his connection back, Robert. No, it doesn't seem to be working. So that's the time to wrap up. I would like then to, on behalf of the whole team to thank you everybody, the speakers and the panel participants for finding the time to spend the two hours or even more of your precious time with us and all the preparations and to contribute to this very valuable topic. Of course, we were not able to answer to all the questions and to cover all the aspects in such a short time. But that's not the last webinar and we hope we will have still other events and this one was still a very valuable opportunity for us to start the dialogue and hopefully the participants will stay with us. We remain available and willing to respond to all the questions afterwards and hope to have other opportunities to all for all of us to get together and continue this conversation. So thank you very much for everybody. I don't know, Robert, can you say goodbye? Am I back now? Yes, yes you are. Right from the moment that you asked me if I'm back, the connection dropped again. So I'm very sorry for this problems I had, but the most important of course is that the speakers were and the panel members were to be heard and that you could have an interesting information from them. Like Oksana said, we can continue the discussion en probably the community of practice of the FEO's regional program of food loss and waste reduction could be a very good opportunity for that. So I invite all participants and audience of this webinar to join the community of practice and that we can continue this type of interactions and discussions. And with that, I would like a very pleasant afternoon en in about six weeks we will have the next webinar I think then focusing on the retail industry. Is that right Oksana? Yes. Did you already say that? No, I did not say that just yet. I give a chance for you. That's a nice day, bye bye. Thank you everybody. Bye bye. Thank you everybody, bye.