When approaching sustainability, the focus of most food and beverage companies is on reducing environmental footprints. How can they go beyond incremental reductions and create positive impacts? How can the social impacts of foods be improved? How can customer value be augmented by sustainable production methods? These are some of the questions that will be addressed in the upcoming Sustainable Foods Summit (www.sustainablefoodssummit.com).
Environmental visionary Prof. Dr. Michael Braungart will kick off the summit with a keynote on re-thinking traditional approaches to sustainability. Braungart will urge the food industry to move beyond ‘efficiency thinking’ and consider eco-effectiveness. He will encourage the use of the cradle-to-cradle design approach so products are designed with closed loops and material nutrients are recycled. According to Braungart, this approach can give food and beverage firms beneficial footprints.
Adrien de Groot Ruiz, executive director of True Price, will give some insights into the hidden costs of food and agricultural products. He will make the case for a true cost accounting approach by factoring in externalities of food production. Soil & More will also present some of its findings on true costs which incorporate natural capital and social capital. Jessica Sansom from Innocent Drinks will share the company’s sustainability journey: how is it addressing its impacts, and what role do metrics play?
The Sustainable Ingredients session will give an update on raw materials. Cees de Jong, president and CEO of Chr. Hansen, will highlight the issues when measuring the environmental footprint of food ingredients. Another speaker will discuss the growing use of byproducts as a source of food ingredients. Givaudan will highlight developments in natural flavourings, whilst Diana Visser from Corbion will tackle the issues when re- formulating using bio-based ingredients.
With a growing number of companies getting lost in the maze of sustainability schemes, Olam international will share its experiences. Organic, Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance, CAFÉ, RSPO, are just some of the standards adopted by the international ingredients firm. The session ends with featured speakers debating the value of sustainability schemes: although positive in providing third party standards, some argue they are becoming an auditing nightmare for international firms.
To open day two of the summit, Dr. Kanayo F. Nwanze, President of IFAD, will highlight the role of smallholdings in the food industry. Accounting for 60% of global agriculture, he will make the case to protect and encourage smallholdings for sustainability. Delia Garcia Gomez from the department store chain El Corte Inglés will share its experiences in tackling sustainability. How important are eco-labeled foods in its sustainability strategy?
The European edition of the Sustainable Food Summit will be hosted at the Mövenpick hotel in Amsterdam on 1-2nd June 2017. Other editions will take place in Latin America (18-19 September), Asia-Pacific (29-30 November), and North America (January 2018). More information is available from www.sustainablefoodssummit.com