Presentation of FoodPort -- a global food waste reduction initiative -- by Mark Mitchell (Supercool AP) and Steven Finn (ResponsEcology/UPenn) at Carrier/United Technologies Corp.'s third annual World Cold Chain Summit in SIngapore (December, 2016). FoodPort is a concept for development of a facility which serves as the "go to" location to efficiently take, redirect, and process excess food according to all levels of the EPA food recovery hierarchy. It draws on the concept of valuation that exists in air travel and hospitals today.

1. FoodPort – Food waste reduction initiative
Mark Mitchell – SuperCool
Steven Finn – ResponsEcology/UPenn

2. 1
Introducing
A new way of looking at the food wastage
problem, based on the airport formula for mass
handling and despatch. In a FoodPort, food is
people, and, like people, it can go safely to a
new destination.

3. 2
• A means of reducing food waste by making food normally marked as waste,
re-usable or useful in some form.
• Based on the premise that communities, including businesses, farms and restaurants, waste
food because there is nowhere to take it in order to save it.
• FoodPort is a destination where food at risk or on the brink of wastage can be checked,
sorted and dispatched to a new destination that consumes the food or
re-uses it in some way for overall community and environmental benefit.
• FoodPort would operate in much the same way as airports and hospitals which succeed at
dealing with very complex issues every day due to the value placed on their cargo –
passengers travelling by air and human lives.
• This same value would be placed on food, which forms the fundamental basis for FoodPort.
Introduction

4. 3
Airports and how they happened
Pioneer aviators like the
Wright Brothers had
nowhere to land other than
beaches and paddocks

5. Airports had to develop processes
• Early flying was frustrating
• Long queues were
commonplace
• People only flew if they had
to
• Airlines and airports
struggled to deal with the
complexities of passengers,
luggage, safety and
timetables in a single
transaction
• WHY? Because early
airports didn’t grasp the
value of passengers
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6. 1
Food too often has nowhere to go
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7. 6
Food has nowhere to go – but WHY?
 Limited food relief agencies
 Limited cooling/freezer space
 Limited staff/capacity/hours
 Limited means of cold
transport
 Lack of processing ability
 Liability concerns
 Cost barriers (transportation
and processing)
 Safety concerns
 Discarding food is too easy
– it is built into operational
decisions

8. Somewhere for excess food to go
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Food becomes the valuable cargo. FoodPort is a place to
process food and send it to an appropriate destination.

9. FoodPort – an airport for food

10. The food arrivals hall
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11. 1
The food arrivals board
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12. 1
Distribution and departures
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13. Dockets issued for all foods
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14. 1
Sophisticated food processing network
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FoodPort would turn the task of accepting and
processing surplus food in large volume into a
measurable and repeatable process.

15. 1
Best practice food transports
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16. 1
Chilled storage
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17. 1
Food processing capabilities
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18. 1
Scaled to meet community needs
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 The scale and size of FoodPorts would vary to meet market and
geographical demands. Smaller versions would service less populated
regions where food waste opportunities are fewer.
 Larger versions would be located in highly populated areas, even close
to city centres, or in large farming areas where food waste is a constant
dilemma for growers.

19. World hotspots targeted
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20. Public/private partnerships
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 The social and environmental benefits of
reducing food wastage in any form are
sufficient for any government to consider
involvement
 FoodPort provides an objective means
for a government to take action by
building designated infrastructure that
helps solve a growing problem, delivers
environmental outcomes and has the
potential to provide employment for a
growing workforce and industry wanting
to focus on food safety and development.
The initial development of
FoodPort will require a
collaboration between government
and industry that may include
involvement of syndicates from
non-government organisations
and charities.

21. Global collaboration
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 Kick-starting FoodPort will require far
greater involvement and funding than one
person or organisation could provide
 It may demand a completely collaborative
approach from competing interests,
domestically and globally, that may not have
worked together previously
 United Nations backing would be essential
to foster the development of pilots in
different parts of the world.
In his famous paper outlining
20 urgent global problems,
Jean Francois Rischard, Vice
President of the World Bank
(1998 – 2005), argued that not
enough was being done about planetary
problems. In his list of problems, food and
starvation figured prominently. FoodPort
falls squarely within his call for a new level
of global collaboration and intelligent
alliances.

22. Global education
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Behavioural change is urgently needed to value food as a means to reduce wastage and starvation
FoodPort is a place to go – a place to land the problem and turn it into a benefit. It converts food waste
into a bankable currency because the means to process it would be constant and predictable.

23. Where to from here
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For FoodPort to work, its design and ambience must foster an immediate
feeling of confidence and efficiency, just like an airport.
It will not be a place to dump food, it will be place where meaningful
decisions are made and a process put in place to re-direct extremely
valuable food cargo to worthy destinations.

24. Where to from here
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 Feasibility studies
 Determine food currencies
 Money
 Carbon credits
 Commmunity benefits
 Who are the operators
 Extent of government participation
 Identify the many owners
 Determine infrastructure needs
 Design for easy replication
 Prospects for food innovation – dehydration of food
 Financing initiatives – a small charge on each FoodPort
transaction to help sustain operations
 Location and planning for a pilot facility to develop
necessary proof of concept

25. Thank you
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