Last year, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (EMF) partnered with the Sustainable Food Trust to launch the Big Food Redesign Challenge, a competition aimed at catalysing and inspiring the food industry to build a better food system that regenerates nature, based on the principles of a circular economy.

To guide product developers, it created the Circular Design for Food Framework, based on findings from EMF’s 2021 study, The Big Food Redesign: Regenerating Nature with the Circular Economy.

The framework identifies four upstream design opportunities that manufacturers can leverage to develop products that actively contribute to regenerating nature. At the ChangeNOW conference in Paris this year, Reniera O'Donnell, food initiative lead at EMF, outlined the four strategies and shared examples of products that successfully met the Challenge criteria.

Four circular design strategies to regenerate nature

The first opportunity to seize is sourcing all ingredients from regenerative production systems. EMF defines these as systems that lead to better soil health, better biodiversity, clean air, and clean water (although it acknowledges that many other parameters could be taken into account). While the result of these practices varies from farm to farm, crop to crop, and geography to geography, ultimately the outcome is the same, O’Donnell said: “Nature is better as a result of these practices.”

The second design strategy relates to diversity of ingredients and variants. While shoppers in a supermarket may feel the food industry provides an abundance of diverse foods, this perceived diversity of choice is often an illusion: just 30 crops supply 95% of people’s calories, and four crops – corn, rice, wheat, and potatoes – supply over 60%, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Commission on Genetic Resources.

Product developers can increase biodiversity and dietary diversity through their sourcing strategies. “Instead of using the Cavendish banana, which is the regular banana we all see in supermarkets, maybe you design a smoothie using the Indian apple banana, which is smaller and more flavoursome,” said O’Donnell. “By doing this, you signal to banana growers that there is a market for them to plant and grow banana varieties that are more suited to their local context, that are more resilient, and therefore that require less artificial inputs. That is exactly what Kencko did when they designed their purple smoothie.”

The third design opportunity is to use lower-impact ingredients. “There is lots of debate about the role of livestock in the food system, and there is no doubt that moving away from using animal proteins to more plant proteins is going to have a significant effect on GHGs [greenhouse gases]. But livestock also play a really crucial role in a regenerative farming system through their natural fertilisation and tilling capabilities. So lower impact doesn't just refer to moving from animal to plant proteins but also about the kinds of crops you are using,” O’Donnell said.

An example of a lower-impact ingredient swap could be using pulse flour, such as pea flour, instead of wheat flour. UK company Brave Cereals opted for this strategy for its grain-free breakfast cereals, using a high-protein and high-fibre blend of pea protein, chickpea flour, pea fibre, and chicory fibre.

“This signals to farmers they can intercrop with wheat legumes […], which locks in nitrogen, again leading to less artificial inputs that clog up our waterways and ruin our soils.”

The fourth design strategy is upcycling. “Keeping products or materials in use – or nutrients in the case of foods – is another key principle of the circular economy,” said O’Donnell. EMF modelling, for instance, showed that if sugars were made using the upcycled sucrose and cellulose in on-farm crop residues, a mere 1.5% of crop residues would be required to meet the global demand for glucose syrup and an area the size of Luxembourg would not need to be farmed.

Circular products: Pancake mixes, chocolate, burgers, ready meals, and more

While creating frameworks based on theoretical modelling is all well and good, O’Donnell said, the real challenge was proving that it actually works for product designers. This is what spurred EMF to launch the Big Food Redesign Challenge.

A total of 166 products from 71 companies and 15 countries successfully met the challenge criteria – that a majority of their constituent ingredients came from regenerative agriculture systems; that they included at least one other sustainable design strategy; and that their packaging was on a journey to circularity – and they spanned many different food and drink categories. For a full list of the participants click here.

What struck O’Donnell was that the products “look[ed] exactly like the kinds of things we buy today only with intentional, nature-enhancing design decisions built into those food products”.

Examples included Creative Nature’s organic pancake mix made with regeneratively sourced fava bean flour, packed in a plastic-free packaging that dissolves when added to the pancake batter.

Another product was a burger patty that replaced 25% of the beef with seaweed – thus reducing the impact of GHG emissions from the cattle used to produce the beef and contributing to regenerating ocean biodiversity – while UK-based Stoked Foods entered its range of plant-based ready meals.

A Latin American brand, Nutricandies, made confectionery with cocoa grown in agro-forestry systems and ingredients that were upcycled from cocoa processing waste streams, while in the drinks category, the Amalthea gin brand proposed a dry gin whose base spirit is made with apples sourced from heritage apple farmers instead of grains.

From design to production to retail

The Challenge is currently in the production phase – brands are starting to manufacture their products – and the next phase will focus on working with retailers to bring the products to consumers. These phases aim to trial the products and learn what works as well as identify what policy changes are needed to enable a circular food system.

“… retailers are quickly realising that they have a crucial role to play in supporting a more regenerative food system. In the UK, Waitrose and Fortnum & Mason have committed to stocking a selection of these successful products on their shelves for six months from early 2025, bringing them to consumers, and in Latin America, Carrefour Brazil are doing the same,” O’Donnell said.

The long-term aim is to transform the food industry’s impact on the environment. According to EMF research, the top 10 FMCG manufacturers and retailers across the EU and UK have influence over about 40% of agricultural land in those regions.

“At the moment, that influence is not giving us healthy landscapes or healthy soils – but equally, it could,” O’Donnell said. “And [manufacturers and retailers] could redesign their product portfolios putting what landscapes need at the heart of those decisions. The products of the Big Food Redesign Challenge have categorically shown that it is possible.”