Floor Brouwer is a researcher at the LEI research institute of Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands. The institute develops economic expertise and gives political advice in the agrofood sector and the living environment.

Algae are an interesting natural resource because they proliferate quickly. They are not impinging on food production. And they need nothing but sunlight and a bit of waste water to grow on.

Most of the animal proteins found in the meat industry waste have, until now, been underutilised. The challenge is to transform such waste into food of higher functionality and added value .

Food processing of cereal and fruits creates a rather voluminous amount of by-products . The London, UK-based Institution of Mechanical Engineers recently estimated that anywhere between 35% and 50%--or 1.

Peanut, egg and soy are more common food known to trigger an allergic reaction, a problem affecting around 8% of children in the EU. Intuitively, you might not list apples as causing allergic reactions.

Increasingly, many of the plastic products we use every day are no longer based on petroleum raw material . Instead, they are made from biomass such as starch, sugar, corn and other sources that also happen to be food products.

A delicious tomato and bell pepper soup, a green bean and potato salad and a refreshing strawberry, kiwi and banana smoothy.

Staying healthy requires constantly stimulating the immune system. Ingesting non-digestible fibres such as polysaccharides is thought to help. Yet companies including such ingredients in their food products cannot claim that they boost the immune system.

Put forty people in a room, all with a smartphone in their hand. Ask them to scan a QR code, redirecting to a set of questions like: “How much meat and eggs do you eat?” and “How often do you fly?” They will first start giggling, and speaking to each other to find their answers.

"To achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 we need more investments than those envisaged by the Green Deal , otherwise we will never make it.

Even though people increasingly recognise the plastic pollution threat, we have used more plastic since the covid-19 pandemic began .

As we slowly emerge from the worst of a crisis that has destroyed lives and livelihoods around Europe and the globe, the move towards a bio-based economy and away from a fossil-fuel centered one has gained a new urgency.

Despite women playing a key role in the life of rural communities, studies show they leave their villages in greater numbers than men do. This leads to demographic imbalances and inhibits local economic and social development.

Surfing has a dirty secret: surfboard production techniques are often at odds with the sport’s eco-conscious image. Most modern surfboards are a sandwich-like construction: a polyurethane foam core – known as a blank – coated in a fibre-reinforced composite.

Every year the EU produces around 15 million tonnes of bitumen . Most of this is mixed with aggregates such as crushed rock, sand and gravel to create asphalt – the sticky bitumen binds it all together – to build roads.

When Dutch artist Jalila Essaïdi was looking to import some American goats, they produce a protein she needed for a ‘bio-art’ project, she hit an unexpected obstacle.

"Why do you talk about short supply chains? You promote small and uncompetitive farms that cater to the richest consumers". In 2012 the former EU commissioner for Agriculture, Dacian Cioloş, said he often received this objection.