Team Loaf Foam from HoGENT in Belgium consists of Niels Soen, Marte Vandenbroucke, Jeroen Luyckx, Bjarne Roelens and Laurens Bodart.
Annually 44 million kilograms of bread are lost at a consumer level in Flanders. These losses cannot be used for feed or food applications and are mostly discarded with other organic waste streams. The Loaf Foam project aims to collect these bread losses and use them to extract starch.
This starch is the raw material to produce starch packing peanuts. These peanuts can be produced by extrusion or microwave treatment. Traditionally starch packing peanuts are made from starch extracted from starchy crops. Using surplus bread as a source lowers transportation and input costs (economically and ecologically) for the feedstock. This starchy waste stream is not influenced by seasonal changes and can be a reliable input stream.
