Emma I wanted to start with you, why food? Why is food such an important
topic for us to explore here at the Ellen MacArthur Foundation?
Well, Seb if we're gearing towards transforming the entire economy, it's impossible not to look
at food, because food is a massive sector and it's not going anywhere. Food is imperative in
our lives, we rely on it to survive. And with a growing global population, it's actually a growing
industry and today, unfortunately, because of the linearity of our food system, it's contributing to
our biggest global challenges that we're facing. So it's the primary driver of biodiversity loss
and it accounts for about a third of annual greenhouse gas emissions. But it doesn't need
to be this way. And we can actually apply the principles of circular economy to reimagine the
food system. So that's regenerative by design. So that's really why we're looking at food.
I think there's a famous saying that food is kind of the mother of all systems when we talk about
system change. We've all got to eat obviously, we're all engaging with food in everyday lives.
There are many aspects of it from the way it's grown to the people involved to how it's sold
to what happens after we've consumed it or not consumed it. How... you've been at the foundation
for several years now. Our food initiative has been alive for a while. What's been the kind of
journey for Ellen MacArthur Foundation and for you in terms of trying to get our heads around?
What role the circular economy has to play in redesigning our food system.
So yeah, you're just highlighting how food truly is
entangled in everything. It's super complex, it touches all of the Sustainable Development Goals.
And it was when I joined the Foundation in 2018, that I joined the initial team
that started to investigate what would actually mean to apply circular economy principles
to our food system. And therefore, what sort of system solutions can we bring to the table,
and as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation be a part of the transformation that's needed. So what we have
seen all along is there is a big opportunity to apply the principles of circular economy,
to go from a mindset and approach of trying to undo the damage of today's linear food system,
to actually redesigning it to be something completely different, something much, much better,
where we can actually be driving absolute positive benefits for people, for business and for nature
now and long term. So we were first investigating, we had this hypothesis that cities as centres of
consumption where about 80% of the world's food is expected to be eaten in 2050,
have a big role to play. And the findings of our research showing that initial year were published
in our first report, our first deep dive on food, which is called cities and circular economy and
that was published in January of 2019 and really gave way to the launch of what we now call the
food initiative in June of 2019. So we've been working with London, Sao Paulo and New York to
support demonstration of circular economy for food in those cities and they're strategic partners
of the Foundation. And that journey continues with them. And then about a year ago, we started
to sense that there was a big opportunity that we could start to tap into looking more at the
industry side, and looking at something that we call food design, I know we'll have a chance to
unpack today. But really thinking about food manufacturers and retailers in particular.
Like cities, they have huge demand power, because they source a lot of food, therefore influence a
lot of land, and create so many of the food offerings that we eat every day around the
world. So is there something that we could develop as the Foundation in terms of an approach for how
these sort of businesses can rethink their food, so that it has the best positive outcomes for
biodiversity, for climate, for farmers, for people and ultimately, for their business.