Upcycling

This is an introduction to our culinary, scientific and cultural research on upcycling—one of the three main interrelated methods we use in our culinary research, along with fermentation and umamification. 

Table of Contents

i. Contextualising upcycling

Upcycling is the transformation of food by-products that are not typically consumed by people, or food that might have otherwise been wasted, into new higher-value foods, medicines, bioactive compounds, biomaterials, and energy.¹ Through upcycling, we can better utilise all the embodied energy, emissions, land use and labour that went into producing things in the first place. 

Here, we focus on upcycling as a means to feed, nourish, and delight people. We think it's important to explicitly acknowledge that, in many ways, upcycling in this context is nothing new. It is part of a much older story of people using resourcefulness and creativity to feed themselves by not wasting edible food. Take bread: the great many cultures whose staple food is bread also have many recipes that use it up when it goes stale. Yet somehow, despite this rich existing knowledge, today's bread is wasted to an enormous extent. 

Likewise, if sausages were invented today, they’d probably be branded as upcycled products. Sausages are typically made with meat trimmings and offcuts, extra fat, and sometimes offal and blood, which are seasoned and encased, traditionally, in intestines. A resourceful use of less obvious, sometimes less desirable products to create something genuinely delicious in its own right. Yet sausages are so well ingrained across diverse human cultures that they are not thought of as upcycled food, but merely as food.

We acknowledge these precedents not as a critique of the many excellent chefs and companies working in the upcycling space, but rather the opposite: to help justify the value and viability of upcycling, and promote a humble approach, by contextualising this relatively new term within longer histories and practices of food culture. Upcycling has huge potential to unlock as yet untapped deliciousness within the food system, and exploring the frontiers of upcycling today connects us to a longer human story of trying to wring as much flavour, nutrition, and sustenance from our foods as possible. Similarly, acknowledging these longer histories can only help us do innovation well—indeed, for us, we feel it is necessary to be able to do it at all.

ii. Our work

One of the main themes in our culinary research and development is to explore how we can use fermentation and other culinary techniques to transform food by-products that might typically be considered inedible into delicious foods.

We share the recipes we develop both as specific products to make, and to encourage reflection on what ‘waste’ actually is, promoting broad reconsideration of all the potentially untapped deliciousness and nourishment within the food system.

We seriously believe in the power of fun and delight to inspire behavioural and cultural change, and that too often these forces are wrongly underestimated or dismissed. In our experience, using upcycling to offer creative, unexpected uses for common products is an excellent way to turn problems that can easily feel too heavy and overwhelming—like the food system and climate change—into invitations for engagement. This approach of ‘serious play’ is what drives a lot of our R&D work, and we hope some of the recipes offer the same experience for you.

We seriously believe in the power of fun
and delight to inspire behavioural
and cultural change.

Many of these recipes are based on traditional techniques, translating them for alternative ingredients. We are indebted to the practitioners and histories of these techniques. With our translations, we hope to honour the originals and to help bring them further appreciation.

Here we present our culinary, scientific and cultural research into several main clusters of by-product streams:

In future, we also plan to share some wider reflections on upcycling, including: 

• what ‘higher-value uses’ might mean, how to select the ‘best’ or ‘highest-value’ uses in specific contexts, and why over-simplified decision-making hierarchies to aid this might be of limited use

• the emerging economy (and political economy) of upcycling

• A Three-Horizon reflection on upcycling that grapples with tensions of utilising by-products in the current system to maximise near-term impact vs transforming to a future flavourful, equitable and ecological food system in which everything that can be upcycled is, but in which some of the streams that exist today might not exist to the same extent anymore, or even at all

Contributions and acknowledgements

Eliot wrote the article, with contributions and editorial feedback from Josh.

Eliot created the header image using the generative AI tool, Midjourney.

Endnotes

[1]  Lucas Cantão Freitas et al. (2021), ‘From waste to sustainable industry: How can agro-industrial wastes help in the development of new products?’, Resources, Conservation and Recycling.