In Canada, 46% of food produced is wasted (Second Harvest, 2024). This represents 25,690,000,000 kg of CO2 equivalent emissions per year, or 58,000,000,000$ in monetary value. Second Harvest's detailed report demonstrates that the issue of food waste is not only caused at one step of the supply chain, but rather throughout the entire chain starting from the fields to our plates.
It is clear that there are two major drivers of this problem:
1) The time variable is one of the main reasons we waste so much. 23% of all avoidable food waste comes from best before dates that are often imprecise.
2) Food waste occurs in the difference between supply and demand. This gap occurs for many reasons including surplus supply in times of plenty and limited demand for certain non-uniform that cost more to transform.
When you combine these two factors, you end up with a constant race against time with many dead ends. Although many projects address waste at one stage or another of the supply chain (boosting demand), the challenge of time remains an ongoing issue.
This is what got us interested in dehydration. This simple technology allows for mass transformation of products in times of surplus, and drastically extends shelf life, thereby cutting out food waste for the entire downstream supply chain.
At Dunord, we have the ambition of not only dehydrating surplus vegetables from Canadian farms, but to drastically increase demand for dehydrated products. We do this with our plant-based meal kits, packed with veggies, plant-based protein, and creative spices. Reach out to us if you'd like to partner in any way (we're always looking for like-minded individuals and organisations to help achieve our mission).
Source: Second Harvest, “ The Avoidable Crisis of Food waste ”, 2024