Food Waste: Can We Reach Zero?

• 1.14.2020 | 5:30 PM - 9:00 PM
• 245 Main Street, 3rd Floor Mosaic Room
  Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142

Whether it’s packaging materials, food waste and agricultural producers, manufacturing castings and beyond, the concept of “waste” is changing as companies embrace circular economy where unused or discarded products and their components are reused to make new products.

Still, the food industry continues to experience inefficiencies. Each year, American consumers, businesses, and farms spend an eye-popping $218 billion a year - 1.3% of U.S. GDP - growing, processing, transporting, and disposing of food that is never eaten. That’s 52 million tons of food sent to landfill, plus another 10 million tons discarded or left unharvested. Food waste is responsible for roughly the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions as 37 million cars. Meanwhile, one in seven Americans is food insecure.

As innovators know, “problems” are “opportunities” waiting for solutions: the bigger the better. Food industry entrepreneurs are stepping up to the opportunity.  They are developing solutions bringing efficiencies to the supply chain (upstream) and reducing food waste (downstream). And of course, using less water, energy, and soil improvement.

Join MIT Enterprise Forum of Cambridge for an insightful roundtable discussion and startup exhibition to explore:

• What are systemic causes of food inefficiencies?
• What drives the movement toward zero food waste?
• Where are innovative companies and startups seeing opportunities - manufacturing, farms, upcycling, etc.?

Fireside Chat: Moderator TBA

Speaker: Jonathan Krones, MIT PhD Engineering Systems, Visiting Associate Professor, Boston College