 Hello everybody. Welcome. We're going to get started at the hour so very soon. Hope you all get settled so we can get started. Okay, it's at the hour. So hello everybody, and welcome to zero emissions solutions conference session on emory climate talks on food waste and on our digestion. My name is airy Saikawa and I'm an associate professor of environmental sciences, and the director of science policy and community engaged research at the resilience and sustainability collaboratory at Emory University. Climate talks in partnership with the department of environmental sciences and the resilience and sustainability collaboratory emory university is a student centered initiative, creating opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to become the agents of change in the climate change movement. Climate education brings an essential voice to efforts on climate change, and we have been proud to support bringing students between 2015 and 2019 to the United Nations climate change negotiations. As the world continues to navigate a new normal amidst COVID-19, then my climate talks has been eager to keep important conversations going about the human impact on climate. This year we decided against sending students, but instead have supported activists and alumni attend the COP 26. We are thrilled that we are able to be a part of the zero emissions solutions conference organized by the UN sustainable development solutions network. And I hope that you have been enjoying the conference so far. This is the last session of the zero emissions solutions conference, and we'll be talking about the importance of food waste from various perspectives. I'm so very excited to have three very esteemed panelists and the two emory students who will be moderating this session. I'm Kiarra Brust who is a first year master's student in the global environmental health program at the Rolling School of Public Health at Emory University. We also have Claire McCarthy who is a third year emory undergraduate student studying environmental sciences. We will have a Q&A section at the end, but please feel free to post any questions you might have in the questions tab that you see at the bottom at any time. I'm sure you're ready to hear from the speakers now. So let's get started. Hello everybody. As Ari said, I'm a master's student at Rowland School of Public Health at Emory University, specifically studying global environmental health. For my bachelor's degree, I studied biology and did research on the consequences of climate change on coral reefs. I'm most interested on climate change when I watched this documentary called Plastic Paradise. I highly recommend it. And I'll now leave it to Claire to introduce herself. Hi everyone, so I'm a third year in Emory College studying environmental science and I really first became interested in climate change when I attended a summer program in high school and I was just really shocked by what an intersectional social justice issue it is and how broad reaching it is and it will affect everyone. And I'm specifically interested in climate activism and I'm involved with the Climate Reality Project. All right, so today's session will focus on policy and current interventions for food waste. We will be learning about the kinds of laws that regulate the production and uses of food waste, along with the current food waste recycling strategies, such as anaerobic digestion which converts food waste energy and vermiculture which uses the power of worms to create soil amendments. Globally about a third of all food is produced. All food produced is lost to waste. So now is the time to learn from industry innovators and support them as we tackle this major issue. So today's session will start with introductions by the panelists, followed by a facilitated discussion about their knowledge and practices involving food waste. We will conclude with an audience Q&A session. If you think of any questions throughout the session, please don't hesitate to write it in the questions tab. We have several people monitoring the questions tab and we will address your questions as soon as the Q&A session begins. Before we do, we will start our session by introducing Mr. John Hanselman. Hello everyone. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. Sorry, I was just going to read a brief bio as an introduction so Mr. John Hanselman is the founder and chief strategy officer of Vanguard renewables, a leading organization for the development of organics to renewables energy by establishing anaerobic digesters on site with dairy farms. Vanguard renewables is able to recycle organic waste and turn it into renewable energy and low carbon fertilizer. They are committed to reducing on farm and food generated greenhouse gas emissions from waste by 95%. Mr. Hanselman has more than 30 years of experience leading renewable energy and environmental companies. He works alongside Vanguard's farm partners to enhance regenerative agricultural practices for the ultimate purpose of combating climate change. So now Mr. Hanselman it'd be great if you could please introduce yourself and your organization, especially your work as it relates to food waste. Great. Thanks so much, Claire. And I will attempt to share some slides with everyone. Just a little bit of an introduction as to what we're doing at Vanguard. So we started Vanguard renewables about eight years ago when we realized the potential power of organic recycling and understanding that we could actually empower a circularity where we could take organic materials, divert them from landfills and take them back to farms and other locations where we would build anaerobic digesters where we could extract the renewable natural gas, the biogas that was in those streams and converted into either electricity or renewable natural gas to be injected into the local gas grid. And then to also produce the liquid fraction, it turns out to be an extremely high nutrient, low carbon fertilizer source that we can use on our farms and gave back to all of our farm partners as part of their journey towards regenerative agriculture as a base process and theory within their own farming techniques. This is a quick little illustration of just how that circularity works. And the thing that was stunning to us is the idea that food waste and organic materials in general are very unique in the world of recycling. And that they're one of the few streams out there where the disposal and the recycling of the material really changes the properties of whether it becomes a really awful and corrosive greenhouse gas or becomes a very useful negative carbon fuel type. And I think there's very few other materials that can have such immediate and certain impact on reducing the impact of climate change. So what we have found over the years, when we started was we kind of figured everyone would be the path to our door as we, we allowed them to take that turn out to be much more complex. It is a disruptive effort. There is a history of, or no history of food waste recycling. There's a history of waste management in the United States that we needed to kind of redirect. It's been remarkable in our ability to get partners, really wonderful partners and folks like Starbucks and Unilever and Giovanni to help us in that mission. I'll talk a little bit later about, about how we've all kind of come together under a new farm powered strategic alliance to try and bring the voices of large food manufacturers retailers and distributors to the table, and to get them to make a public commitment to really try and empower that circular area that we talked about a second ago. One of the things that was really critical for us to understand, or became really apparent as we were building out the systems is that this was a disruptive practice and it was something where we needed to build the infrastructure, locally within the community to get the food waste and other organic materials from the generators from the households to the farms and get it into our digesters to be converted into the renewable energy. That building of that infrastructure also requires and I know a professor probably will talk about this a minute policies that help direct that change, I think everyone understands the quantity or at least beginning to understand the quantity of food waste that's in our system. What is it would less clear is how to get it out and get it recycled and that's, that's really been a big part of our kind of investing in the infrastructure. The good news is, is that that demand for renewable natural gas and we're demand for renewable electricity that can be derived from the recycling of that food waste has increased significantly over the past eight years as we built out this infrastructure and even over the last 24 months. The pressure, interestingly from Wall Street on on major corporates to create an ESG program to create a sustainability program to use science based targets has really changed the way that folks have have started talking to us about acquiring the renewable energies that we make. This is just a nice graphic example of one of our latest farms. We were honored to win most stable farm in the United States this past year. And it really is because of that circularity and on this farm, we're able to take waste from folks like Ben and Jerry's and cabinets, you get into the farm, recycle it, create that wonderful fertilizer that we then put back on the fields that feel those that feeds all of the local people that are processing herd of cows that milk and goes out to make that that cheese and that the ice cream that we all love so much, and then continue that circle in perpetuity. In addition to that here, we're also removing phosphorus from that circularity which has been resonant and creating such a huge problem for the Otter Creek watershed and Lake Champlain, the local waterways. And that I think is another key part of what has to happen to the industry, the anaerobic digestion industries we go forward to is really monitoring both the input and the output and here we come to the next step forward we think and how we do that. Earlier we did we were fortunate right before the pandemic to form the farm power strategic alliance and for us. This is kind of the natural evolution of how large corporates can really make a change, and a very, very small set of changes on their side in terms of redirecting the way stream. Our mantra to them is that waste is a mindset and that their organics really aren't a waste. They're just a misplaced resource. And so if we can get that from them and get them to stop sending to landfills or incineration and get that into a place where we can actually harvest all of the potential out of that material. And that makes a really significant change, and that's been a wonderful adoption since the founding members Starbucks Unilever, the dairy farms America. And we've subsequently added to Bonnie Stonyfield and several others who are about to be announced as well. So it's been a really exciting growth for us and something where we see the corporate component being actually a huge mover in the marketplace. What's really cool about renewable natural gas is it is a drop in replacement. So you can decarbonize and replace the reliance on fossil natural gas, simply with the flick of a pen. There is no change necessary in any of the structure or operational structure with anyone who is using it so whether it's in a household or in a large factory. Using fossil gas with renewable gas is both quick and extremely effective. And it's effective because of that. The time to kind of go through the calculation of how renewable natural gases is measured in terms of carbon intensity, but suffice to say that the standards that we've thought and I spent the better part of a decade working on solar prior to this, you think of net zero energy and wind and solar being able to have carbon negative actually healing energy that comes from the farm. That's the thing that that's most exciting about what we've been able to pull together and so we're, we're see this as something that that's not only a US phenomena, but also should be a national phenomena. It is it is well into its maturity in the EU and the UK. And we think that there is there's lots and lots of possibility and potential throughout the world throughout the world. Thank you so much john for explaining all of that for us that was I already have so many questions for you but I will leave those towards the end. And now we have Emily broad lead. So, Professor Emily leap is a clinical professor of law, the faculty director of the Harvard Law School food law and policy clinic, and the deputy director of the Harvard Law School Center for health law and policy In 2011, Professor Bradley founded the first law school clinic in the United States devoted to identifying legal and policy solutions to address the health economic environmental challenges facing our food system. Her work has been covered in the New York Times, the Guardian and several other distinguished news outlets. She was also named by fortune and food and wine to their list of 2016 most innovative women in food and drink. She was co founder and co chair of the board of trustees for the Academy of Food Law and Policy from 2014 to 2019. She is now the faculty supervisor for the Harvard Mississippi Delta project in Harvard food law, food law society and supervisor of the National Food Law student network. So Emily, if you could please introduce yourself in your organization, especially as it connects to food waste. Wonderful. Thank you, Kara. And thank you, Eric for sharing slides. It's, it's really wonderful to be here. I'm really delighted to be invited and I also in addition to thanking the organizers I want to thank john for the nice shout out for the importance of policy which is what I'm going to talk about as well. And so if you can go to the next slide. And I wanted to explain a little bit about what the food law and policy clinic is and then I'll talk a little bit about some of our work in the food waste area. And so the food on policy clinic is an action based learning program at Harvard Law School where we do kind of three main things one is educate law students about the laws that regulate the food system. So I do that both in the classroom and in the hands on project based learning. I do everything I mean interesting thing about food is that there's so many different agencies and laws that that touch the food system, and in many ways aren't very coordinated. So we talk about food safety we talk about labeling and marketing. We talk about the First Amendment which is a lot of offers a lot of protection for speech in the US which can get in the way of some of the ways that we might want to regulate labeling and commerce. We also talk about agricultural subsidies and the environment. And then the second part of is, is that we provide legal and policy advice to clients which are nonprofits, government agencies, coalitions, social enterprise, and we really focus on four areas which we see on this slide, sustainable and equitable food production, food access and nutrition, community food system planning and then reducing food waste and increasing food recovery which I'll talk mostly about today. So if you can go to the next slide you'll see here images of just some of the different projects and clients that we've worked with in these four areas. And so you can see one picture here which is a project we worked on a few years ago with Navajo Nation, that was really a kind of lengthy toolkit, going through all different areas of the food system and really laying out where Navajo Nation has power to make certain policies versus where they need to defer to the federal government or to state governments. We have in the middle you see a logo for a report we did doctoring our diet, which was within our nutrition portfolio and was really working on trying to increase education for health professionals in the US around food and diet which right now is not a big part of the education of doctors or other health professionals, which means that we're sort of missing an opportunity in terms of the health side. And then many of these are working our food waste space which is what I want to really focus on. The last thing I'll say in addition to the projects that we do is that a lot of my work is building the field of food law and policy and you heard from Chiara in my intro. I also found the Academy of Food Law and Policy and the National Food Law Student Network. We're really trying to build out knowing the importance of law and policy to the food system. We're trying to build the networks in this space that are working on it and I started the first clinic but it's lonely doing something without peers and partners collaborating together so that's been a lot of my work as well. So now turning to some of the work that we do on food waste. I like this map. It's a little bit outdated but I love it because it shows that food waste is really a global phenomenon. And that's one important thing and then the other important piece is that the places where food is wasted along the supply chain vary from region to region. So what you can see here is the blue circles in every region show food loss, which is food that's lost really on the farm or immediately post harvest. And often that's issues with cold storage or, you know, harvesting capacity or really getting food cooled down immediately off the farm. By contrast the orange circles show food waste. So this is food that's come from the farm it's gotten manufactured and processed and packaged and trucked or shipped all over to where it's going and gets wasted really at retail at restaurants and food service or in people's homes. And the interesting thing you can see is that North America is the one region where food waste at that those levels of the chain exceeds food loss. And in Europe, they're quite close those two circles so there's really, you know, it's a global challenge but the solutions often are going to vary from place to place. Next slide. And so, you know, I, one of the, the, because of sort of the issues in this area, and the importance of this to, you know, to food systems to hunger to, you know, getting food to people in need and also to climate. So the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that about eight to 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions come from food waste. So this has become a really big and growing part of the work that we do in the clinic. And what does that look like to work on this, we work at all different levels of government at the state and local level in the US we do tracking of different bills and we provide direct assistance to states. So the federal level in the US we've worked on a US food loss and waste action plan that I'll mention more in a moment. And then we've looked at the US farm bill where we provide subsidies to agriculture and food producers, and we've spent a lot of time in both the last farm bill and the one that will be coming in the next few years, really drilling down into what opportunities there are within that to make sure that the food we're supporting goes to people's plates rather than getting wasted, or to things like compost and anaerobic digestion or animal feed, rather than going to a landfill. And then now on the global level we're doing some work in particular where we're analyzing and comparing laws across countries to find the best models for laws that reduce food waste and increase food donation. Next slide. So I'll just as two examples I mentioned one of the things we did here in the US earlier this year, along with an RDC refed and the World Wildlife Fund we put out a joint US food loss and waste policy action plan. So the four organizations drafted this together but we have several dozen signatories including both local governments, nonprofits, and then many businesses like Unilever, several hotel chains, Kroger's. So what we what we did was we really said at this moment, when we're really focused on climate, and there's a real increased attention on it what do we think that Congress and the US administration can do. And we really drilled into five key areas that you can see here. One is really policies to invest in prevention and keeping food out of the landfills. We have a couple different areas where we can increase donation, showing leadership of the US, educating consumers again in light of the fact that so much waste in the US happens at the household level as you saw in an orange circle being bigger than the blue in the US. And then standardizing date labeling in the US which is been proven to be one of the most cost effective ways that we could reduce food waste here. The second project I'll profile briefly on the next slide is our global food donation policy Atlas. So this has been a real pleasure to work on we connected with an organization called the global food banking network. We work by funding and technical assistance to food recovery organizations all over the world, primarily in lower income and middle income countries. And we work with them to partner with food banks and food bank networks in different countries, and with their buy in to really analyze the laws in different countries and really map out on some of the key areas of law where countries have best practices and where they can learn from one other. So the next slide shows what the areas are that we're examining. And what we found is that law and policy play a really big role, they can be a barrier. For example, one of the areas is food safety in many, many countries that food safety laws don't mention food donation anywhere. And they make it really difficult for businesses to know what they're allowed to do, and for food banks to know what they're allowed to recover and donate. So that area serves as a barrier. Similarly liability serves as a barrier. And companies are very concerned that if they donate food and someone becomes ill, that that would end up causing them to pay out for penalty, even if they handle that food safely. They followed all the rules. And so many countries, including the US have passed laws that provide protection. On the flip side, law can be an incentive. So tax incentives has been in many of the countries we've looked at they have all different levels and there's definitely some best and not as good practices but making really offsetting the cost of donating food can encourage people to encourage organizations to make that part of their practices. And so the next slide just shows in one area what this looks like so this is when you when you can use the map to a bit liability protection. What you can see is countries that are highlighted in green have a strong policy like the US and Argentina. And in yellow means a moderate policy. Orange means more limited and then red means that that country doesn't have a policy on this area. And we have also been hosting webinar conferences with government officials from all these countries and others to talk about some of the best practices and provide peer to peer learning. And what we've really found is that often in this area. There's a lot of interest in making change and there's not a lot of opportunity for countries to learn together on the nitty gritty of some of these policies that are most important. So it's been really exciting and rewarding. We've finished 14 countries so far which you can see on this map, and we have six countries underway, and that we're working on right now will be kind of continuing every few months to add more countries to the map. We also have really detailed information on the laws and recommendations for all of those. So, next slide is just sort of a thank you and, and I'll just finish by saying, you know, this was kind of giving a couple examples but I think what we're seeing across the board is that in particular where there's really innovative ideas and opportunities. They're often hit up against questions of law and what I see our role is doing is both educating students who can go on and be leaders in this field, but also providing real time technical assistance to organizations and governments that are, and that are trying to really figure out the best path forward to make the food system healthier more sustainable and more equitable. So, I look forward to the conversation. Thank you so much for that introduction Emily I'm excited to hear more about your work throughout the panel. So I'm now going to introduce our final panelist, Mr Wayne Harper is the founder and managing director of urban farms recycling, a waste management and commercial vermiculture operation. By providing a recycling solution for their food waste, urban farms recycling helps companies reduce costs and lower their environmental impact. So urban farms mission is to improve agricultural production and soil help using sustainable systems. Mr Harper is also an executive MIDI member of organics recycling Association of South Africa is also a mentor for endeavor South Africa for its accelerator entrepreneur programs that aims to develop black owned businesses in South Africa. Mr Harper's educational background is an economics and waste management. So Wayne I'm going to ask you to please introduce yourself and your organizations, especially your work as it connects to food waste. Thanks Claire. So really, our organization was founded in 2015 to to provide a local solution to food waste. It was really born out of out of my passion for for home gardening and deciding that I actually had a resource in my house that I was not using. And through a lot of research and a lot of trial and error. We have developed a low tech solution to to taking post consumer free waste. And putting that through a process where we ultimately use it as a feedstock for regular worms, and we produce a soil and millions or fertilizer from the worm costings. So, there's just a few numbers there of the food waste that we've recycled close to. We're getting close to our targets of getting to five million tons in the first seven years of operation. And this is a significant impact both on our corporate clients because they are closing the way cycle, but also having a significant impact, which has become more important to them of sustainable best practice, and, and taking some of the USG boxes that are now becoming vitally important. And so if you go to the next slide. So, because we're dealing mainly with post consumer waste source separation is is one of the key topics and systems that we've had to develop in our business. This is a lot of education, really trying to get food based where it is generated, separating at their source and ensuring that that separation is maintained. Anyone who is in the food waste space, particularly the post consumer space will know that contamination is a constant battle. And the key, the key thing for us at the end, we're trying to use this as a resource for for an end product is the cleaner the waste, the simpler process is. So once we're dealing with the mixed food waste source. We use Pocoshi, which is technology developed in Japan. It's very simple very natural anaerobic process, which vitally for us allows us to stabilize the waste on our client site. We do further reductions in carbon footprint by having to collect waste less often and importantly not having any vermin or pest issues on site. We then take that Pocoshi treated waste, and we take it to off site composting and culture facilities. So there primarily we're looking at an initial thermophilic composting phase, which will effectively pasteurize the waste eliminating pathogens and seed germination and end in product. The final step is is obviously putting it through our worm farm. This is a research or sort of medium temperature operation and look worms are nature's way of returning in waste to back to the soil and making it by available. They're pretty amazing creatures and we've used them and their special special powers to to help trans transform the waste as as john mentioned food waste should not really be seen as a waste but rather resource that we just haven't used as yet. And for us to do in farms, the worm plays a vital role in in returning that at as the highest level product that we can produce. If you go to the next slide. Yeah, the key the key things are, you know, I think my main area my focus area in this discussion will be source separation and onsite separation. And it's, it's been the key thing that we've developed in order to to try and clean up and make sure we've got a resource that we can put into a process and reduce a product that's efficient. And, you know, I think this is this is sort of key area where we're looking at policy as well some of these things have to have to go into policy discussions. But you know there's a policing. It's a, it's a, it's quite a mixed bag of things and you know where we started was, it was more of an environmental decision so it's getting buy in for people was very much doing the right thing, but if we want to make this pervasive system. We do need to have policies and structures and processes to enable everyone to do this because we need to, we need to treat food waste as a whole if we want to make progress in reducing the common, common footprint of this waste and and in fact largely to reduce this as a waste. Yeah, if you could just go to the next slide and just show you some of our facilities. We're trying to build a nationwide network of facilities. You'll see some large scale facility in the western Cape is is a pretty large scale composting facility while situated. We also have a culture plant there that's producing around about 100 tons of food costs per month. Some of our sort of more inland facilities are really compost and vermiculture really allows us to to turn food waste one into compost which is relatively low value and from a consumer perspective into something that is of a higher value or fertilizer product. Yeah, so I'm excited to get stuck into discussion. Thank you so much Wayne. It was really interesting I've heard of the Kashi composting and I've actually tempted it myself but was unsuccessful. So maybe I should ask you afterwards how I can fix the way I'm doing things. So, yeah, so now we'll start with the discussion portion of this panel. So we will be alternating between the panelists with different questions starting with Emily and then going to john and then finally Wayne. However, if any of you have anything that you'd like to add to the conversation, you're free to do so. Emily, your first question is what food lot issues does your law school clinic prioritize. Are there certain issues that are common and are frequently brought up by clients. Yeah, thank you so much. It's a great question. So I would say, you know I mentioned already in my opening remarks that we do a lot of work on food waste food recovery. And I think that that because of that and because you know there aren't a lot of people in the legal field working on these issues that is certainly one of the biggest areas that we got lots of questions on so for example I mentioned that we do some work at the federal level. We've now in many different states we've been asked to put together like legal fact sheets that state agencies can give out about the laws on food donation. So we're doing that right now in New Jersey we're finishing them up I just got an email this morning with edits to one of those. And then we're also working in New Mexico right now where there were some questions about protections for food donors and in particular for cleaning that really came up during coven. And so we're kind of preparing both sort of guidance on what the laws are now and then suggestions of how they can strengthen those. And kind of bigger picture. There's a lot of questions that we've worked on historically and even more so in the last year and a half related to food justice and food equity. And so, you know, we're doing a couple of particular projects in that area one that, and that I'm really committed to has been around policies in the US that allow for foods to be made in a home kitchen, which I think evidence shows that the most people that benefit from this are women, people of color and immigrants who, you know, for various reasons are kind of at home have trouble breaking barriers down to get into starting other businesses like restaurants, but they have real skills with cooking and preparing food. And in particular, after the last year and a half of the pandemic, a lot of people that worked in food service didn't have their jobs and they had a set of skills. So we've seen actually in the last year, 55 different state bills were introduced to broaden the amounts of foods that can be made in a home kitchen. I've been working on this here in Massachusetts. I had one of my students give testimony this week in the Massachusetts legislature on state law here. And then we're working in a couple other states too. So, and that's just, you know, a couple of different things that were that we're doing. I could go on and I feel very lucky I get to work on really cool things and I get to kind of help my students get involved in this and do the hands on work as well. Thank you so much for that answer. And then our next question will be for John. So what are some challenges that Vanguard renewables has overcome in terms of establishing an Arabic digesters for communities. And what is the greatest challenge it currently faces and expanding the use of inner digestion. I think probably the greatest challenge is educational. And just letting folks understand that this is a constructive pathway and to really illustrate how impactful it can be both to their carbon signature as well as the farms carbon signature and being able to really highlight all the attributes of farm based recycling of organic materials. I think a lot of what we had to do. Again when we kind of saw what had happened in Germany at Denmark and the UK. We kind of thought it would be an easy transition here in the States. Nothing could be further from the truth in that we're you know we're very stuck in kind of our our traditional modes of throwing things away and not recycling and not separating materials to access their unique capabilities and so we had to really spend the time both educating our direct generators. We have to help communities understand that digesters are wonderful neighbors and not nasty neighbors and really work with the utilities to make sure that we could get that energy out of the systems and into the grid. And to decarbonize both either the electrical or natural gas grid. So it, it was a lot of education, a lot of building understanding a lot of really kind of grassroots work to let folks understand that that this is a pathway that's that we think is is significantly improbable and significantly more beneficial to all the members of that that circularity. Thanks john. Later on we're going to ask you a question that's you kind of alluded to here. So that was very helpful thank you. I'll be ready. Wayne, your first question is, given the innovative nature of your system. It sounds as if you perfected the process through plenty of trial and error. What advice would you give to an organization that's trying to implement the same process so that they don't repeat your mistakes, if you had any. Lots of mistakes. I'm only just starting to get positive with words I have killed a few of them. I think the key thing for me is anything you know any process where you're changing things in order to get to a better system is not to change too many things at the same time. And because if you do that as soon as you do that you don't know which is what what has actually worked. So the crucial thing and we did learn this a little bit trial and error as well is is that you've got to keep as many of the variables and stable as possible in order to actually understand what the small changes you're doing. Are they having an impact that you that you seem. You know, one of the key things for us as well and one of our big social issues in South Africa. Is around employment. So our systems are pretty, I would say low tech. We looked at, if you look at vermiculture in Europe it's it's mechanized. There's quite a lot of tech involved, whereas ours is really low tech and it's human powered. And again it's it's the whole business is around creating a network of of of hands that are taking local food waste and turning it into a resource. So yeah in terms of the iteration it's definitely taking time and and controlling the variables so that you're able to measure and understand what changes have been affected. And it takes time. All right, great. Thank you so much that's very interesting to hear and we're going to circle back to Emily. I really like the social justice perspective that you touched upon in your previous answer. The question is, so in constructing anaerobic digestion facilities. How can we center community voices and concerns to achieve the most just and sustainable outcomes, and which stakeholders should lead the implementation of anaerobic digestion in a community. And if you don't work as much with anaerobic digestion I guess just talking about like achieving food strategies for achieving sustainable food systems in general. That's a great question I'll kind of do both thank you for the two options and I'd also be curious to hear john's perspective on this point to, you know I know, you know john alluded to like being good neighbors and I think there's a lot of like fear on the part of communities for both anaerobic digestion and compost facilities as well. Let's see how to answer all your questions I think one piece I would say on anaerobic digestion that that to me, you know really relates to some of the justice questions is really about making it accessible to different different parties to be able to start these facilities and you know it's really expensive you saw the pictures of the technology I mean it requires like a lot of upfront, you know costs and then ongoing costs. One thing that we worked on earlier this year I mentioned we did this US food loss and waste action plan with three other organizations, and our very first recommendation in there was that the federal government should give more money to states and localities to do kind of food waste policies and planning. So, a number of states have put in place restrictions on food waste going to landfill states and cities in the US. I think the policies are really well done at the local and state level because you can get a lot more input from different parties, the enforcement is really done at the state and local level, but there's not always the money there for the cost of creating these facilities. So we worked with those, those partners on legislation that was introduced in Congress, called the zero food waste act that would give money from, you know, Congress will give it to the environmental protection agency and will give it to state and local governments to develop a range of, you know, policies that would reduce food waste and would kind of support development of this infrastructure. One of the aspects that was included in that in light of these concerns was that there would be a priority on grants to diverse locations and for diverse uses, and a priority on grants for organizations that would use the grants and communities of color low income communities and tribal communities that are disproportionately affected by the human health and environmental effects of, you know, climate food waste poor food systems. So I think that, you know, there's both the aspect of, you know, doing planning at as much at the state and local level as possible, but then, you know, where we have funding coming from the federal level to help support that, particularly in communities where there's less resources to kind of build that infrastructure, and then really thinking about how can we make good jobs for, you know, a diverse set of community actors, and so that, you know, we're really spreading out this opportunity as this economic opportunity grows. It's interesting that you say all about because our next question for John is now, how can we expand the use of an urban digestion into low resource areas of the world. And I will even follow on from Emily's EJ question. You know, environmental, if you look at what we're looking to supplant, we're really trying to move away from landfills and incinerators as a method of disposal and really move to a recycling model that makes a whole lot more sense. And if you look at the siting, and I know there's been some significant studies done on the environmental justice piece of siting of incinerators, landfills and transfer stations. They are consistently, and to the great extent, located in low income and minority communities, and being able to move these materials away from those communities, and really be able to take the organic stream and get it on farm. So I think that is is a critical kind of next step in terms of how you start to reduce the environmental justice impact of food waste in general. I think from how do you move the technology to folks because at least 1000% correct the these they're very capital intensive systems. They require training and upkeep the you know annual maintenance, especially when they're done at scale. And that is probably daunting to a lot of communities and I think we're huge fans of federal incentives for the construction and the upkeep of systems throughout any community. What we also see is a really wonderful spot for NGO community in developing countries as kind of sponsoring the smaller scale anaerobic digestion, you know, in rural communities in urban settings, where you can take that the energy that has been revived, and it requires a policy commitment to allow, usually in developing countries, the local utilities the gas and electricity are usually governmentally under controlled. You need to have the community have the right to make their own energy that is not always a given. You're able to take it kind of at the level of, you know, putting together the capital, putting together the policies that allows community self sustaining to take its own organic waste, and maybe even purpose grown crops. So you can grow corn sorghum. And actually put those into energy digesters to make energy. Really exciting, but it requires the initial capital for the construction, an ongoing capital commitment for the operating and maintenance. And then really a follow up to make sure that that that that continuous training that there's there is a, an understanding of how to keep the digest because if you look at most agricultural digesters that were building in states over the last 50 years. Most of those were kind of dropped off at the farm and ended up failing because they weren't kept up. And I think that that is a model that you wouldn't want to see replicated as you take the technology into other locations. Well, great insight. Thank you so much. And sort of continuing on this topic of justice. Our next question for Wayne is how do you incorporate a social and environmental justice framework into your systems. But I think in our country or the developing world, seeing this as an economic activity and a local economic activity is a vitally important thing. Effectively, this is a whole new business opportunity for communities. And the nature of waste is that it is local. So having systems and having businesses that can transform that waste locally is, is, is a great opportunity. And that's really what, you know, the, the important thing, especially the Organics Association of South Africa is where we're looking at our government has realized that there is, they've got this dual problem of we've got a waste problem. One, it's understanding that waste and Emily could certainly help us out with, with proper legislation because you're trying to get what I call left over food that is still perfectly good for consumption in a developing world needs to actually go to a human to sustain them and then and then secondly identify what is actually real waste. And that needs to be returned to the soil in the developing world. We've got a good opportunity in that the agricultural space, looking at, at exporting, you know, agricultural sector in South Africa is actually very well developed. But, but there's also opportunities for smaller scale producers. And it all, it's all about building the circular economy. And for us in South Africa, it's, it's brand new. So, and also do think that sort of the local authorities and government don't necessarily understand the costs of landfilling and maybe those costs are not highly, highly mapped out. They certainly don't have the environmental costs in there. But again, for communities as John was saying these are often cited in, in, in sort of lower income or downtrodden communities that's where landfill is. There's a big justice issue around that. It's, it's not right. And, and we need to have policy we need to have business and we need to work together to actually change the entire system. If I can add on to something Wayne said, because I think, you know, there's, you point to one issue which is that it's really difficult to figure out how can we encourage food being diverted away from the landfill but also remembering that there is sort of an environmental problem of where that food should go and that the first best thing is if that food is been prepared and gone through all these phases to be safe to eat that it should go to people. And I think that becomes really tricky and we've seen certainly in different state policies in different countries policies that, you know how do you navigate prioritizing that but then making sure that if that doesn't work out that food then goes to processes like, you know, vermiculture compost and urban digestion. And I think that's really tricky. And the other thing I wanted to say was that we worked a couple years ago. You know, just very small support but to a case in the lower high court in Pakistan, for the court actually found that food waste is is a bridging the right to food. And what he said is, you know, the right to food includes the right for food not to be wasted, if that food is safe to eat, and that that means there's a duty on government to actually put in place policies to ensure that that food doesn't get wasted. So here in the US we don't recognize a right to food, which I think is part of our problem but you know I think many many countries do and you know thinking about this that there's that there's a duty on government to make sure that food that is good to eat gets to people, figuring out how you triage that you know go to the next stop on that chain if that isn't able to happen. And that is also kind of, you know, a big opportunity and a big question. Yeah, I think I remember your slide if you looked at your orange circles and your blue circles that really does highlight it. You know, if we look at Sub-Saharan Africa that orange circle was tiny because because people almost bypass the law you know it's it's it's it's desperation I need to I need to eat that food. And so I think it's a balancing act about what is safe and obviously we're also dealing with corporations and the producers of this food are particularly aware of the impact on their business if something goes wrong. So, so it's definitely a balancing act, but you know your your your map showed it you know that's that's really sort of economic situation that we find ourselves in. Thank you both for those insightful comments. So now we're going to be moving a little bit away and Emily we would like to ask if you could name one thing that you're most proud of in terms of your work with food law, what would it be? There's I feel very lucky and I'd say maybe on the project side and then just you know I think one of the things I feel the most lucky about is that I get to work with great students and so taking a pause to really thank Yara and Claire for moderating today and just you know the amazing work that students can do and in like taking your time to do this and think about these issues and learn all the things you can learn to be part of the change. So that when I think about you know I've been doing this about 10 years I started the clinic kind of roughly 10 years ago. The number of students of mine that have now gone on and are in local or state or federal government, you know, former fellows and staff of my team that are now like leaders in their own right doing work in food systems and environment and food justice. And so that part is just utterly, you know, probably the best of all of it. And as far as, you know, project that we worked on that I was proud of I mentioned earlier that the US Farm Bill which every five years we enact this ball that has a whole bunch of money in it nearly, you know, $500 billion worth of spending for a five year period of time that goes to support farmers and getting food from point A to point B around the US. And prior to the last farm bill there was $0 zero mention of food waste and food recovery. So we're spending all this money to produce food and we're not spending a dollar to really think about how do we make sure that food ends up on someone's plate instead of in the trash. And so we were before that farm bill we wrote a report that said, here are 16 things that could go into the farm bill that really fit well they fit with the mission that could start to divert food from being wasted. And a number of those about seven of them actually in some form or another made it into that farm bill. And now kind of working on the next one and getting ideas together and, but I thought that that was just really exciting that we got, you know, a foothold and really prioritizing this issue. And, and sort of saying this is a national priority we need to invest in the resources and the awareness and the technical assistance if we want to actually make an impact. Thank you so much. And then next question for john. So are you optimistic that an orbit digestion will become the standard food waste management system in this country at both the industrial and residential level. What about globally and if you're not optimistic what needs to change first. I think it's a tiered approach. And, and, and we really believe has an incredible seat at the table. What we want to direct to enter a digestion is is unusable food. And what we don't want to take is food that can obviously go to help folks who are at risk. There is there's such a large level of endemic food waste in the food manufacturing process in the United States, as well as the very, very sincere amount of food waste that comes out of the home. And I think between those two, there's more than enough we capture capability. And really, we don't want to be having to touch stuff that could be repurposed that could be repurposed as animal feed could be repurposed as for human consumption that that's those streams have to make it to their appropriate destination but how can, could supplant something like 15 to 30% of the total natural gas usage in the United States and that because of the carbon negativity, could actually take natural gas and make it a net zero fuel which would be our greatest hope for really changing the impact of methane on the environment. Thank you so much. And then on a similar note for Wayne, we are wondering if you're also optimistic about the future expansion of vermiculture in South Africa. And why are my knots and what factors are limiting its expansion. I'm certainly excited. I think, I think for us the excitement is, is what I'm going to call sort of micro operations already score small scale local. Just in my dealings with the roster. We, we've now got a group of 60 vermiculture practitioners around South Africa that have formed a little sub working group. Yeah, it's definitely got potential. There's a few things that need to happen. People need to value the worms castings a bit more. But it's all it's all again I think John alluded to this you know what's the biggest challenges it's definitely education. I think we, we, we all have the sort of a forefront of a very new industry and our jobs as almost founders and entrepreneurs is, is more education than anything else. You actually have to educate your customer to say that they need your solution that they don't come to you. You got to tell them what they need your solution. So I think that's the challenge but certainly exciting and vice again as I alluded before it's it's it's a key to to job creation and and a good job creation. It's a big move to to hands on the food system micro farming, even in the US now we, we've seen what happens in the US market and covert and covert is shown us so many things you know how important a local food system and a robust food system is. And if you're relying on big supply chain. We've seen big problems in the supply chain or that sort of just in time large international supply chain has fallen down during COVID. So if you've got access to a good local farm. And that would be your friend and I think that's, that's the key to us in this sort of industries as we effectively providing an input to farmers and transforming a waste stream to provide that and I think that's, that's the crucial thing and that's the exciting part. Thank you so much. I'm glad that you're excited for the future. And so now that it's one o'clock I think we're going to be moving on to the Q&A session with the guests. We have a few questions. So I guess we can start with the first one actually never mind, because the first one is directed to john, but he had to leave unfortunately. So we will move on to the next question, which is from Naureka. She's wondering how difficult is, is it to push for a greener approach to food waste. How can the global north take responsibility for their role in creating a circular economy. And this is directed to anybody who would like to answer. That's a huge question. It's a really good question. And I think, you know, kind of, you know, appropriate in, you know, a lot of the discussion that is, you know, goes on a cop, the cop 26 like what is the role of each of the different countries, especially countries that have benefited from a lot of, you know, prior development and now, you know, taking kind of responsibility for that. I can't answer all of that. I will say that, you know, I think many of the global companies are based in the global north. And so I think, you know, things a lot of companies now are putting out sort of sustainability commitments, zero waste investments, etc. I think a lot of its uses a marketing tool so it's great that companies are doing that but I think that it would be great to see more of, you know, home countries for those companies, making more of those requirements or, you know, digging into what are what are those commitments that companies are making, how, you know, how real are they, and how much are companies actually meeting those metrics. You know, I do think that, you know, we've all talked about that there's a lot of opportunity for change, and it's really just about some of the friction that's keeping us from getting there. And so, you know, I think that's sort of one starting place, I would say as well that, you know, I think we've all three mentioned in different ways, and requirements, you know, to reduce food going to landfill, and the ways that those have now led to more distribution. So, whether it's, you know, compost or on orbit digestion or donation. Here in the US, for example, Massachusetts has a restriction on food going to the landfill, and they saw that there was a 22% increase in food donated, even though it's not required it's just like, you can do anything with your food except send it to the landfill. They saw 22% increase in donation. They're actually 500 jobs, new jobs created in an orbit digestion and composting and food rescue, and actually created more revenue for the state just by treating food as a resource. So, you know, I think that there's sort of, you know, everyone's scared of having a policy that's a stick, but actually the stick policies are not only better for people and for the environment but actually are creating jobs and value. So, you know, I know that sort of just one piece of it but I agree the responsibility is there and we need to figure out the ways to take that responsibility. Wayne, I'm curious what you have to say on this too. I think from the global staff, I guess, I guess probably leadership. I really think this whole, you know, what you're talking about really requires leadership and it's going to require people to stick their necks out and maybe let's go with the stick approach, but otherwise, you know, I think we certainly see it here that the sort of blue chip or international companies that are here are certainly playing a leadership role in wanting to divert their waste and trying to achieve that zero to landfall and taking the lead in that. So, yeah, I think it's almost collaboration and leadership is what the world needs in the space where we, something's got to change. So, it's good that we've got Kiara and Claire leading the way from the youngsters because they're going to be crucial in following this through. In the light of carp at the moment, we need promises to be stuck to. And that's probably not, you know, it's going beyond food waste. I think that's to the whole sustainability of the planet. So, from my side, we're only scratching the surface. John was talking about sort of negative carbon signature of things and for me, you know, the soil covers the entire planet or entire landmass of the planet. And that's a huge tool for actually reversing climate change, you know, the amount of carbon that can be sequestered just by soil microbes, let alone plants is significant. And I think that's something that as as the planets is important. So, to keep back the clock, not just stopping it. Right soil health and how that's going to be taken into is going to be so essential. So I'm so glad that you mentioned that way. So we've lost some people, but we're going to continue and there's there seem to be some shyness among the audience. I'm glad there are some coming in. So please continue to put in the questions. This is your time to ask the question to the esteemed panelists. I want to ask your question Emily there is a question from Maddie. You mentioned conflict between regulation in food marketing and freedom of speech being an obstacle in your work at times. It's interesting knowing if you could expand on how that's been an issue and the balance of struggle you found between force amendment rights and public safety sustainable policies. It's a great question. And I'll give a little answer but I will say, you know, it's sort of very us specific, because we have this phenomenon of the First Amendment which is very beautiful in a lot of ways it protects speech and protects, you know, political activities. On the flip side, I will say I've been, you know, teaching now for 10 years and about maybe five years ago I added a whole day to my class on the First Amendment because it started to become a challenge to so many different things that were policies we were looking at in the food system. And part of that is the way that our courts interpret the First Amendment with regard to the speech of companies. And so over the decades the courts have given have have brought in the protection more and more previously. And that protection was really for like political speech and artistic speech, you know, things that we think of as being core parts of our First Amendment and starting in the 70s and with more and more protection since then we've also said that applies to the speech of companies. And what that means is that when we've worked on policies where we either want to not allow companies to say things because they might be misleading as to health or safety or environment and sustainability, that's been really difficult. Or when there's been efforts to require certain labels. So for example, now at the US national level required label for genetically modified foods, but there were previously states that were trying to do that at the state level, and there was companies were bringing those cases to court basically saying the First Amendment wouldn't allow us to require that label on foods. The same has been coming up with things like warning labels for sugar and health reasons that lots of other countries are using things like, like, you know, stop signs on foods that are really high and certain ingredients that are harmful to health or that are, you know, perpetuate diet related disease. And those things are really tricky here when they come in front of courts. Sometimes they haven't been able to go forward so it's really interesting actually it's a little bit depressing I will say because I think that it and the trajectory of the way that courts are interpreting this is just kind of giving more and more protection to companies that said it's a it is still limited area it's really around labeling some of these other regulations that are more like you can't send food to the landfill or things like that don't get caught up in that First Amendment landscape. So our next question is from Wayne. Somebody is wondering, are you engaged with students in local communities, as well as farmers to help educate about the value of your system as a solution to a big problem. Yes, absolutely we work with a number of sort of education institutions. Particularly around that trying to to engage and develop entrepreneurial systems. Because we urban based, it's mainly sort of peri urban farmers. So fairly small scale high intensity farmers. We work with the University of the Mid-Var to strengthen the food system in the local townships and localize it and through that create employment and businesses. So we do quite a lot of work with that and that's really involves about actually taking the waste that's being generated in that food production system and returning it as a resource. So it's really closing the loop in that small farming operation. Definitely. And as I said before, you know, I think our role these days is really to start off as educators and hope that more and more people get involved and that's the key to building that momentum. So there's a question from Kathy, pre-packaging of food and selling in fixed quantities or sizes or amount is very convenient for business, but does it contribute to consumer food waste? Could we reduce food waste simply by changing marketing methods to allow people to buy the quantity they actually want? I think absolutely. I mean, that's that's really addressing the sort of what I'm going to call on farm or in food system waste. It's a huge problem as you in your interaction. One third of the food produced is wasted. And that's before it even gets to the consumer. So it's, you know, there's awesome innovative things. I don't know if you've ever come across a green fruit of veg. They really campaign about out of spec vegetables. You know, we all like to go to the supermarket to the store and see a perfect apple. But what about all the ones that don't look as perfect, you know, and I think it's educating around the fact that, you know, that that is still nutritious food. And particularly in our developing world scenario, we need to really focus on on that. You know, our economy is quite dichotomous. If I want to put it, we've got a very first world side of South Africa. Then we've got a very third world. So we see that play out, you know, in the sort of high end retail stores, you won't find there's a lot of packaging. There's a lot of perfect veg, you know, so that equals a lot of waste in that system. But then on the other side, there's a lot of direct to consumer selling. If you go into the townships and cities of South Africa, it's the food is sold by vendors that are on the side of the street and doing exactly that. There's a bunches of spinach or for people on the way home and also in economies where people don't necessarily have the ability to shop in bulk or at scale food actually becomes a daily occurrence. And I think there's opportunities and looking at that as a system. It's not the worst thing in the world. There's far less waste when you actually you buy something and you consume it that that day. It's a need. So that's why you'll see in, you know, in Emily's map, we don't have a lot of post-consumer food waste in the lower end of the markets, but we do have it at sort of that first world market. So definitely I think, you know, it's not only packaging and labels, but but it does actually come down to to buying what you need. Lifespan and there's a lot of living produce in stores rather than pre-packaged just to we need to do everything to extend the shelf life of the food we're getting to reduce that waste. Can I add in just one or two things? And also, you know, the one thing we've got specifically on the labeling thing is, is everyone here sees best before as the day you've got to throw something away, which is we need to remove best before just have like an expiry date that's, you know, it's really, you know, I always say when I when I speak to people, if you've got something in front of you, you know, if it's good to eat or if it's not, so you don't need a, you don't need a best before date, just look at it. I was going to actually say a word about date labels too, but I think, you know, one thing we've worked on it for a while here in the US, we actually have no standard date labels on our products. So a couple years ago, Walmart did a study and they found that in their stores, there were 47 different labels used sell by best buy enjoy by use by package on. I mean, I can't even name 47 it's like, you know, very companies can get very creative apparently. But I we found out in our research that the US is so far the only country globally that doesn't have any national law on this at all. So I would say like, you know, I know from the work we've done in South Africa that it's art that it's an issue there and we're even steps behind that because we don't even have a label that is communicating clearly quality versus food that is being labeled because it's yours. And I think there are a couple countries doing this really well. There's kind of an EU wide policy and then the UK, because they've been part of the EU. They also have that but they've elaborated even more so there's foods either have the words best before or used by, and if it's best before then that means that those foods are labeled for freshness. There's no risk after the day you can eat it. They've done huge campaigns to businesses to say please donate after that date because it's still perfectly safe. And then to consumers to saying, you know, for those foods with best before as long as it smells and tastes fine. There's nothing wrong with it. The biggest risk is that it would be stale and it wouldn't taste as good and so therefore, you know, don't eat it but, but I feel like in the US we don't even have that like we haven't even kind of told which are the foods that are fine and which aren't. And I think the other thing I wanted to say that's, you know, this question is really on point about is that there's one big challenge is the nexus between food waste and packaging waste. And so in some places they really can align but there's also some challenges where, as we, for example, try to donate more food. Often that food needs to be packaged in some way to kind of make that it's adding a step on the chain essentially. So sometimes we see that, you know, if we're not thoughtful about that step of donation, we can create kind of more plastic waste and things like that. So that's a thing that I think is really important to keep in mind. And I'm also curious Wayne from your experience I know having talked to, you know, folks who run an urban digestion and compost facilities that the packaging of food is actually like a total nightmare. There's a bunch of foods sent to the facility to actually have to de package it in order to process it. And I'm not sure from your end if that's been an issue or like how you handle that get, you know, how do you get it all out of the package to be able to start your process. No, absolutely. I mean, so I mean we if we're talking pre consumer waste, that's generally cleaner because it's coming out of a manufacturing facility. That's a bit different. But yeah any any sort of expired food, always coming out of kitchens contamination is a huge, is a huge problem and and you know, a particular bug be of mine is is the single use containers you know if you go to a hotel. Why does the butter have to come in in a plastic tub. You know, you know, if I if I look at we're going to look at anthropologists are going to look back on us in hundreds of years time, think that all we ate was plastic butter containers jam containers. It's it's it's a it's a scourge and and unfortunately I don't think health concerns around COVID actually exacerbate that. I think there's, there's more waste now because oh someone has may have touched that and then it's got to be disposed of as soon as it's gone to the table so so there's certainly challenges and it's it's a whole mindset. And do both. It's the other so many challenges that come with food waste. But hopefully we can get past them. And so I think this last question is from the anonymous attendee. And they're asking what are examples of major policy barriers we're facing for scaling up and or a digestion and composting or regenerative agriculture in general. So I can start there. One of the exciting things that has happened in South Africa of latest is, there's actually been a relaxing of legislation around facilities that compost food waste. And I think anaerobic digestion would be included in that. They've gone from a system, which was quite sort of insistent on legislation to adopting more norms and standards that they've they've understood that there is this problem. And there's a potential opportunity to create small scale operations to help eliminate the problem. And it's definitely been a relaxing that move to a norms standards as of June this year is actually because it is. But again, the wheel turns quite slowly so the key thing is actually more sort of enforcement. I can understand the sort of policies is let's let's let's let's try and get some facilities up and running and then we can we can start becoming more strict on enforcement because we've got the offtake. But yeah, I mean, there's it's definite requirement for the large scale adoption. I mean, I feel like, you know, weighing your answer is so, you know, you have the on the ground experience. I think for my end, in terms of what we hear as being challenges, the biggest one is costs and I get that that doesn't sound like a policy but it is because we're we're sort of allowing all these externalized costs in the food system right now that, you know, you know, that we're not we're not addressing, but then, you know, the lack of investment in this as a solution or, or the enforcement against companies of saying you can just continue to throw food away because that is wasting resources and causing really high methane emissions. So I think, you know, a policy barrier is the decision on part of government to not invest in these infrastructures that need some upfront investment to get them going. And the other we've also heard similar to what Wayne said in the US, that the permitting of an urban digestion and composting very place to place. And some states are further along and sort of there's a playbook if you want to get your facility started you kind of go you know what you need to do. And then some other places and sort of like, oh you have to call the right person and then they'll tell you you have to, you know, you're kind of like running in circles trying to figure out where to get started. And I think that's a place where, you know, one recommendation we've made before is that there's kind of opportunities for maybe like model permitting and regulations from that states could all be using so whether the EPA can put something like that out or, you know, a more global scale some of these things are, you know, aren't there's sort of best practices for the way to do that permitting that we can learn. And I think the other issue that's come up sometimes in the US is around zoning and just where facilities are allowed to locate and so, you know, this happens at all different scales we were involved years ago several years ago in Boston was you know, zoning rules for urban agriculture in the city of Boston, and people wanted to be allowed to do small scale composting at urban farms, and it was a huge issue and they ultimately allowed it but on a very small amount it's only like, I think it's like less than 3% of the property can be used for composting and you can't bring in external materials you can only compost the materials from that urban farm. And so again, I mean I think if there's no locations where you're allowed to do composting and urban digestion again, you know, might need a larger footprint but, but really thinking about, you know, making it easy for these entities that we know are playing a role in social good and not making it so that you need to jump through so many loops to be able to raise the funding and figure out what you need to do in order to start a facility. Yeah, thank you so much for the very rich conversation in food waste, compost and other digestion issues and we talked about packaging and it was just so, I feel it's so rare that we can hear the perspectives from companies in the global south and global north together with academic perspectives on these issues. So I really want to thank you all for such a great discussion and also the audience for the great questions that you've provided. Since we are almost out of time but I was wondering if we could finish with a very brief concluding remarks. I was curious if you could let us know about, you know, some kind of solutions that you're excited about for climate change, and maybe your wishes for COP 26, so that we can end with hopeful solution oriented ideas from you. If you can start with you Emily. Big, big question with a short time I mean I think you're right we talked about a lot of things here. I mean one thing that I've really seen from our global work on food donation policies is just how much opportunity that is for countries to be sharing with one another, and that sort of, you know, big part of COP 26. I think one challenge when you look at where food plays a role in this is that there's so much to cover. So I think I know there'll be some discussions about food and agriculture. I think having more opportunities to kind of really continue those conversations and have more sharing of those policies that are working really well would really be beneficial. You know, I think the other thing I really want to see is sort of, again, in light of our conversation investment in policies that move the needle forward on the contributions of food to climate, and then also on supporting food producers and the greater food system in terms of adaptation because that's coming to, and when I think about farmers and food producers that already are really suffering from drought and wildfire and you know other kind of impacts of climate that's an incredibly important thing that that needs to be you know addressed in this in this forum. Yeah very true way. I think, I think in COP 26. The big, the big elephant in the room to me is the impact on climate change on food security and we're talking about food waste but food security is a huge issue and as us here down in the south. We're really bearing the brunt of some of this and we certainly at the most risk. But I don't think it's all doom and gloom. I think regenerative agriculture is gaining momentum. I think it's really got the ability to change a lot of things. You know, there's this perception. I think it's, I think it's disappearing but that that organic or regenerative farming is not able to feed the planet, which is absolute nonsense, in my opinion. And if we do it properly, we really, the word regenerative says it all, we can. And yeah, I think from my side, I think as a planet we need to work together more. We need to share and we need to have more platforms like this and have dialogues from north to south and we can all learn from each other. But what I really hope for is just a real commitment from the powers that change is required and we actually need to see some boots on the ground making those changes. So we need to have a lot more conversations like this. Yeah, that's very true and especially the COP 27 is going to be in Africa, I believe that food and agriculture is going to be very important as well and food insecurity as you mentioned. So thank you so much. I would really like to thank all the panelists, John, Emily and Wayne for sharing your experiences knowledge and wisdom in this session. So we tried to create a prototype for anaerobic digest that just start on Emory campus with equity by design mindset. We hope that we can actually rely on your advice, and then continue the discussion. Food waste is a low hanging fruit that needs to be tackled to mitigate climate change and solutions are available as the panelists have shown us. So I hope that you all have been inspired to move forward with hope in the future as I have through this panel. And let's take a moment to give the virtual round of applause to the panelists who work on this very important intersection between the food waste and climate change and tackling the climate crisis every single day. Thank you also goes to the organizers of this conference and everyone for participating and contributing in a very great way with the discussion and sharing your ideas and sharing your whatever information you have available for you. And thank you Chiara and Claire for moderating the panel. I'm, I hope that we were able to go over all the questions but we are sorry if there were more that we couldn't get to. Thank you Laini Kung from the UN sustainable development solutions network and Leah Thomas from Emory climate talks for doing all the work behind the scenes as well. So zero emissions solutions conference concludes today, but I hope that you will stay tuned for the event next year, and please check out the recordings that was on the chat. I hope that some of you will join the Emory climate talks webinars as well in the future. So thank you so much everybody. Enjoy the COP 26, whether in person or virtually, and let's continue pushing for climate action. So have a great weekend. Thank you so much.