Why 35% Of All Food Ends Up in The Garbage

11/08/22 • 51 min

Eva Goulbourne | ReFED website | Littlefoot Ventures

In the USA, 35% of all food produced ends up in the dump. This is 90 billion meals worth of food annually, equaling out to the same climate footprint as the entire U.S aviation industry. When I first learned these facts my mind was blown. All I could think about was why do we let this happen?

So to answer this question, we break down the problem of food waste and food loss with the World Economic’s Forum food waste/loss expert, Eva Goulburne. We run through a route cause analysis exercise to break down the problem, and understand different route causes. We follow the journey of a little potato from seed to table, and all the possible places throughout this system where out little potato will get wasted. And we also explore solutions that have been implemented, and ways that these solutions have been sucessfull, but also how they have failed.

This is a classic Luminexus episode, where we spend an hour connecting the dots between the route causes of a problem and failed solutions, and come out the end of our conversation with more clarity and understanding about why the problem exists, and what we need to do about it to help address the problem.

Eva Goulbourne | ReFED website | Littlefoot Ventures

Previous Episode

The Intersection of ML, VR and Design to Create Solutions to Complex Problems

Sonya Kotov

Everything humans make starts with a design. A rough sketch on paper, a flow chart, an outline. Humans have become masters at designing perfectly engineered products to make our lives easier and buildings so tall it’s hard to fathom.

What if we take this same design approach that goes into products and buildings and apply it to designing solutions to hard problems? Using the beauty and logic of design to create solutions that will benefit humans across the planet and everything else on it (including the planet itself). In this conversation we talk with Sonya Kotov who is studying design impact at Stanford University, about how to actually design an innovative solution to a problem, and the kinds of solutions that are needed to create real change in the world.

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Here’s How Neurotech Cure Parkinson’s (and other diseases)

Hannah Claridge | TTP

One in six people suffer from a neurological disease like Parkinson and Alzheimer disease. And currently, none of these diseases have a cure - there are some therapies and medicines that can temporarily reduce symptoms, but no cure.

Traditionally, finding a cure to a disease happens from thousands of hours in a lab, then that discovery gets created into a vaccine. But what if we ditch this framework and look for a cure to the deadliest neurological diseases from the top down (literally). Starting at the brain and mapping out how the disease works and progresses, and creating a neurotech device that can mitigate and stop the disease from occurring or progressing. This is the radical kind of change that we talk about on the Luminexus podcast, and we are happy to be joined by Hannah Claridge, who’s work revolves around creating healthcare products to cure neurological diseases.

In this conversation we talk with Hannah about her work and research in Parkinson’s disease, and the process of designing, creating and bringing that healthcare product to market.