Food Solutions. From Waste to worth. Use of plant residues

Description

The participants in this activity were encouraged to find creative solutions for a new kind of waste management through international teamwork and scientific exchange. Individually, the students gained greater awareness of the international and local food system, including waste on all stages of the production-trade-consumer-chain and the possibilities for new business ideas.

There is the potential to reveal novel depots of worthy ingredients (e.g. pigments, carbohydrates, fibers) in waste material, and to proceed to their extraction in sufficient quantities for further use in food and non-food applications.

The students built up an extendible prototype of a database including (1) occurrence of plant waste material (e.g. production site, trade level), (2) list plus calculation of the amount of ingredients per plant species and organ (leaf, root, and flower), (3) a simple calculation of the extraction volume, and (4) possible use of the extracted substances (e.g. pigments, carbohydrates, fibers, fatty acids) for processing (nutrition, processing, platform chemical).

Period	Jan 2019 → Dec 2019
Event type	Course