Excelsior Cafe is extending its collaboration with TABETE, a food waste rescue service, to include 99 of its stores. Starting from January this year, Excelsior Cafe’s first batch of 40 stores prevented more than 250kg of food waste. The success...
A newly opened zero-waste supermarket in Kyoto aims to bring packaging-free shopping not just to Japan’s ancient capital, but to the entire country. Interest from customers and other retailers is pushing the company’s expansion plans along faster...
Did you know that food products within safe “consumed by” dates are being discarded? Food products have delivery dates—deadlines that indicate when they should be shipped to stores. When the products miss these delivery dates, the food...
Two food companies and a group of students have collaborated to develop a new product, Sustainable Shrimp Cracker, made from two kinds of food waste. The first source of food waste comes from the heads of sweet shrimp, leftover in the process of...
ZENB Japan is tying up with Associate Professor Haruko Noguchi of Tokyo University of Agriculture and her students at the Agriculture Department of Agricultural Innovation for Sustainable Society to develop “ZENB Sandwich” that maximizes ingredient...
Let’s have a look at a circular-minded restaurant in Finland. Nolla, meaning zero in Finnish, is motivated to provide high-quality, in-season food while pursuing a zero-waste ideology. Since opening in March 2018, Nolla has been ensuring all aspects...
The Big Issue Japan, a social magazine sold by homeless people on the streets, is now taking up the issue of food waste by running a bakery that only opens at night. Yoru no Panya-san (Night-time Bakery) procures leftover bread from popular bakeries...
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, roughly 30% of food is wasted globally each year. Food waste occurs at various points in the food supply chain, including during production, retail and consumption. On...
Koji might not be well known outside of Japan, but this fermented agent is used to make popular Japanese food such as miso, soy sauce and sake. Kyushu-based koji company Kawauchi Genichiro Shoten invented technologies to turn food waste into...
From the Edo to Meiji periods, merchants called Omi-shonin (Omi is a province currently known as Shiga) traveled parts of the main island of Japan by foot to sell merchandise such as kimono, fabric and linen. The philosophy of their business was...