Report from the third Farminar

On December 14, the agriculture office (LAN-Hungary) at the Netherlands Embassy in Budapest held the third webinar in the Farminar series.

The Farminar is a series that brings together Hungarian and Dutch practitioners, stakeholders, farmers and researchers in the fields of agriculture and the food sectors to discuss best practices and exchange knowledge.

The third event, Farminar 3 – Organic Waste Utilization: From Trash to Treasure was, just like its predecessors, a bilingual online event in English and Hungarian, with simultaneous translation. More than fifty participants joined in from the private sphere, academia and higher education, NGOs and the governmental sphere from Hungary and the Netherlands.

In three presentation panels, five experts from PwC, Pilze-Nagy Kft. and the Duynie Group shared their findings, experience and best practices in the process of reusing organic waste, valorizing organic industrial side-products and researching the situation of waste reusal in Hungary.

In the first panel, Gábor Balogh and Júlia Perger, analysts from PwC gave an overview on the sources of organic waste in Hungary.

Over 2.3 million metric tons  of organic waste is produced annually in the processing industry, agriculture and forestry, and domestic households. The utilization of this is branched towards energy production (biogas and incineration) and and non/energy directions (organic manure, compost and feed). Market opportunities are now open to green biogas production and biodegradable production including alternative solutions to substitute single-use plastic products, biodegradable packaging for the FMCG sector or production of bio composite products (organic waste mixed with plastic products).

In her presentation, Ms. Perger mentioned several interesting statistics in relation to food waste: Firstly, as opposed to other countries, food waste in Hungary is mostly happening at the end of production and processing rather than at the end consumer. Secondly, hungary is at the top of the list in metabolic waste in the EU, while the Netherlands is at the end. This means that the Hungarian population has a larger percentage of obesity because the high concentration of calories in the food intake of the average citizen lead to a high percentage of over-nutrition. Answering a listener question on the best practices of reducing food waste in the processing sector, Ms. Perger replied that generally, digitalization is the best solution to streamline processes and reduce wastefulness.

Dr. Adrienn Nagy, general manager of the company Pilze-Nagy Kft. presented some firsthand experience and best practices in the field of organic waste utilization. Pilze-Nagy is a market leader in oyster mushroom farming in Hungary.

In her presentation, Dr. Nagy talked about the biobased  economy that includes the use of biomass  for feed,  food, cosmetics, bioplastics and energy. Dr. Nagy stressed the significant volume of lingo-based forestry waste that has several angles for utilization. Regarding agriculture, some good practices were also introduced for valorization. Mushroom production waste is suitable for biogas production and interestingly sunflower stem is used in the manufacturing of cosmetics.

In the last panel, Jan Bakker and Szilárd Major from the Dutch Duynie Group talked about the valorization of side- and waste streams in the food processing sector.

In their presentations, the two experts gave a comprehensive insight into the valorization of waste originated from the primary sector and covered by the activity of the company. The conversion of brewery yeast to feed was explained together with the consulting activities of Duynie in relation to value chain analysis to discover value for side stream waste products.

The event closed with Counsellor Koen van Ginneken’s final remarks. Counsellor van Ginneken talked about the importance of utilization of all sorts of waste products in order to increase sustainability and take steps towards increasing the share of bioeconomy in the global economy today.