Bethan Grylls recently took to a sustainable food tech forum to call attention to three outstanding food and drink innovators from the UK.
People were rushing into a building filled with exciting music where cucumber and strawberry plant containers were the only adornments on the walls.
Silo – a modern restaurant with traditional methods
Silo is an innovative zero-waste restaurant based in London, UK. Its founder, Douglas McMaster, revealed in Mills Fabrica’s tech talk how he built an environment-friendly restaurant in the year 2011.
The architecture of the building is inspired by the art of Australian artist Hoost Bakkar. Its message of not having a bin moved McMaster, who later inculcated this concept into his restaurant, inspired him the extent where McMaster found a reflection of himself in it.
Silo’s environmental friendliness is rooted in traditional methods of food products, such as flour mills that mill wheat like it was done in old times. Butter and oats are also prepared carefully at the restaurant. The restaurant staff strongly advocates nose-to-tail ideology which means not letting go of the smallest bit of animal waste that dies for food.
Additionally, Silo features a brewery that makes naturally fermented drinks. Environmental concern is not limited to food preparation methods only. Silo’s furniture is made from recyclable material, for instance, food cartons. Crushed wine bottles, that otherwise become a part of waste, have been used to create the plates and cutlery.
McMaster felt it necessary to explain that our nature does not have any bin. Human beings are the only species that need a means of disposing of the thousands of tons of waste material that never gets disposed of.
So why waste food at all? We claim to be modern and civilized. However, we are actually contradicting our own claims by polluting our planet.
Supplant – agricultural side stream upcycling
Also, part of the tech talk was Dr. Tom Simmons who found Supplant, a company that upcycles agricultural side streams such as husks, hulls, corn cobs, and stalks into sugars.
Almost all of us are aware of the supermarket and domestic waste but little do we know about the mess created on the farms before commodities are moved to the production houses.
Supplant utilized these fibre-derived ingredients to create nutritionally rich confectionaries, chocolates, and shortbread, which will not impact your health negatively as refined sugar does.
Hoxton Farms
In conversation with Max Jamilly, the co-founder of biotech company Haxton Farms, it was revealed that meat consumption has increased worldwide and the traditional production methods are furthering the problem.
Meat is a food with great cultural and social value. Its quality of bringing people together and also setting them apart can be used to create food that influences our environment.
Easier said than done, it calls for great behavioural changes among people without hindering them from enjoying foods they love to eat. Hoxton focuses on growing cells in a hygienic environment to provide the same taste as organic food does.
Jamilly added that killing animals for food sound primitive. He looks forward to a generation that prefers environment-friendly food alternatives – alternatives that consist of variable plant cells. Nevertheless, this transition is going to be a huge challenge.
According to many sources, the UK is known to be lagging in terms of scaling up. Excited about writing the playbooks, Jamilly said that such innovative organizations and means have always existed. The only new factor is customer satisfaction. Economic problems aside, there is hope for scale-ups.
Scaleups in the UK lack skills and talent. There is little market access and opportunities to expand overseas. A lot of funding is needed to work towards a transformation.
There is a dire need for consistent efforts both at the regional and national levels to open a gateway for sustainability. While the UK is not the best option right now, our younger members can act as game changers.
McMaster recalled his visit to a primary school where the infrastructure was not so good yet the students appeared to be strong supporters of saving the soil. Education like that can aid towards a better future for the agriculture and the meat industry.