Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s Plastics Pact Adds European Group

Every Thursday, California resident Richard Redmond takes a gallon-sized container of food scraps to the farmers market in the city of South Pasadena where it is collected and composted for use in gardens – an effort to reduce the amount of household waste he sends to landfill.  “It’s just stunning,” said the web designer who is in his 60s. “You can see how separating it just reduces the amount of garbage you are putting out.”  Redmond’s experience is a tiny window into a huge global problem, and not enough people are with him.  Every year, the world throws away around 931 million tons of food, most of it ending up in landfills, where it decomposes to produce around a tenth of the world’s climate-warming gases, according to the UN.

Consumer goods giants Unilever, Coca-Cola and Colgate-Palmolive have agreed to fund and pilot innovations designed to improve supply chain sustainability through Anheuser-Busch InBev’s (AB InBev) accelerator scheme.
Image: AB InBev
Launched in 2018, the brewer’s 100+ Accelerator has supported 36 projects to date with more than $200m of funding. Key focus areas have included water efficiency and water stewardship; improving traceability; reducing pollution; increasing recycling rates and supporting renewable electricity generation and distribution.