“Innovative, scalable, replicable”: Impossible foods among winners of UN award for sustainable food initiatives

03 Oct 2019 --- Three grassroots food sector initiatives received recognition at the 2019 United Nations Global Climate Action Awards, ranging from a piloted city policy demonstrating the potential to transform food systems at a local urban level, to a “climate positive” burger that is “taking the fast food industry by storm.” The awarding ceremony runs parallel with Climate Week NYC and closely follows the UN Climate Summit in New York, US.

“This year, we had over 670 applications from all over the world ranging from local governments, global companies, grassroots development initiatives and multi-million dollar impact investment projects,” says Gabrielle Ginér, Chair of the Momentum for Change Advisory Panel. “This year’s winning activities are amazing examples of innovative, scalable and replicable climate action. We hope they will inspire others as we look to tackle one of society’s biggest challenges.”

“Winners of the UN Global Climate Action Award receive support in the form of a year-long marketing and public relations campaign, culminating at the 2019 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 25) in Chile,” Neneh Darwin, Communications Specialist of UN Climate Change, tells FoodIngredientsFirst.

The UN Global Climate Action Awards are spearheaded by the Momentum for Change initiative at UN Climate Change. The awarding ceremony is part of a wider effort to mobilize action and ambition as national governments work toward implementing the Paris Climate Change Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals.

“Announced against the backdrop of nations signaling their renewed determination to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, these awards shine a light on 15 incredible examples of scalable climate action around the world,” says Niclas Svenningsen, Manager of the UN Climate Change Global Climate Action Programme. “These inspiring examples of climate action serve as beacons, guiding us towards a more resilient, more sustainable and more prosperous future for all.”

The projects are recognized as innovative solutions that not only address climate change, but also help drive forward progress on many other non-climate related sustainable development goals, for example, innovation, gender equality and economic opportunity.

Impossible Foods – Winner of “Planetary Health” categoryImpossible Meatballs by Impossible Foods.
Impossible Foods was awarded for its plant-based replacements for meat products that are more sustainable and help displace market demand for meat products. The company states that its model proves three things – that consumers will “enthusiastically receive and pay for plant-based meat alternatives”; that this can be accomplished across all relevant sales channels that are necessary for impact scaling; and that their proprietary technology and food science platform can drive expansion across the entire industry, not just for Impossible Foods.

Compared to beef, the brand’s Impossible Burger was found to require 96 percent less land and 87 percent less fresh water, while generating 89 percent less greenhouse gas emissions and 92 percent less pollution to freshwater ecosystems. In 2018, Impossible Burger sales of beef spared the equivalent of 81,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, 3.4 billion liters of water and 100 square kilometers of land.

By design, Impossible Foods’ says that its activities and strategies are replicable. The company has developed foundational technologies which allow for the replication of plant-based meat manufacturing. These manufacturing technologies are also capable of being reproduced in most locations with existing capital and by modifying existing machinery, the company notes. Finally, it adds that plant-based meat is more flexible than animal-based products, as it can be created from thousands of different crop-derived ingredients.

Ghent en garde.Ghent en garde – Winner of “Planetary Health” category
Located in northwest Belgium with around 250,000 residents, Ghent was one of the first European cities to launch its own urban food policy. Launched in 2013, Ghent’s urban food policy is demonstrating the potential to transform the food systems at the local urban level.

“This award is a very important recognition. That we, as a middle sized city, can be a source of inspiration to others worldwide, is a very big compliment. In a few years’ time we have put in place a food policy that positions us among the leading cities worldwide. But the challenges remain huge. This award is a real push forward to stay ambitions,” a spokesperson of the food policy tells FoodIngredientsFirst.

Under its policy “Ghent en Garde” the city of Ghent aims to strengthen short food supply chains, increase sustainable production and consumption while also allowing for better access to food and decreasing food waste. Through participative governance models, including a food policy council, Ghent’s food policy has evolved from a range of small scale initiatives to enable wide-spread structural change to the city’s food system.

Ghent en Garde tackles different challenges through tailor-made responses. Local food is booming through the establishment of suburban farmers markets and a new logistics platform for professional buyers, the initiative reports. The city also launched a new distribution platform that redistributed over 1,000 metric tons of surplus food over the past two years to over 57,000 people in need, while the city has connected 120 stakeholders to improve access to sustainable and healthy food.

“The city of Ghent puts sustainability high on the agenda. We aim at becoming a climate neutral city by 2050. Food has a high climate impact and thus raises on the agenda. It not only impacts planetary health but also human health,” stresses the initiative’s spokesperson.

MAX Burgers – Winner of “Climate Neutral Now” categoryVegan and lacto-ovo burgers by MAX Burgers.
The Swedish restaurant chain, Max Burgers, launched the “world’s first climate positive menu” in June 2018. Climate positive is defined by the company as “removing more climate gases than the value chain emits while at the same time reducing emissions in line with the 1.5 degree goal from Paris.”

Max Burgers ensures that each item on its menu is “climate positive,” taking into account all emissions from the “farmer’s land to the guest’s hand,” while even including the customer's journey back and forth to the restaurant. This has required extensive efforts by the company to measure its entire footprint.

Each item on Max Burger’s menu includes a CO2e label to empower customers to better understand the climate impact of food and guide them towards options with a lower carbon footprint. The initiative builds on the company’s 2016 launch of plant based “green burgers”, which have a fraction of the climate impact of beef burgers.

All the winning projects will be showcased at a series of special events during the second week of the UN Climate Change Conference [COP25] in Santiago, Chile, held on December 2 to 13, 2019, Darwin explains,” she adds.

By Benjamin Ferrer