On a regular basis, Indie Ecology founder Igor Vaintraub collects a total of 120 bins of food waste from 80 of London’s top restaurants and composts the scraps on his 10-acre farm in West Sussex. Vaintraub and his team then grow new produce to be hand-picked and redistributed back to kitchens from which it originated — and eventually to plates. 

Changing consumers’ mindsets towards healthier diets and more sustainable systems of food production is no easy feat, not to mention the physical labour required in agriculture. Yet, Vaintraub's commitment to making food waste farming a priority continues to inspire food service businesses and consumers alike to become more eco-friendly eaters and carbon-conscientious.

What does the future of sustainable food production and consumption look like?

Indie Ecology has a hunch.

Igor Vaintraub founded the company back in 2011 teaming up with London’s top chefs to collect and compost wasted food. The eco-friendly operation not only improves soil quality, saves on landfills and boosts biodiversity, but also feeds people more sustainably whilst encouraging healthy eating habits.

Laurent-Perrier has joined forces with Indie Ecology for Taste of London. Ella Walker finds out more.

The champagne house is celebrating the 50th year of its light, almost butter-smooth Cuvée Rosé. In honour of the occasion, they’ve enlisted the aid of food waste farm Indie Ecology and five top restaurants for a series of master classes at restaurant festival, Taste of London.

Chefs from restaurants including Adam Handling’s The Frog, Ikoyi, Roganic, The Modern Pantry and Club Gascon are set to present a tasting menu paired with Cuvée Rosé, while guests learn all about the champagne’s history and flavour profile.

Food, as we know, is a terrible thing to waste. Roughly one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption gets lost or wasted every year. But what if we could use food waste to create more food?

That's the elegantly full-circle idea behind Indie Ecology, a West Sussex food waste farm that collects leftovers from some of London's best restaurants and turns it into compost. The nutrient-rich matter is then used to grow high quality produce for the chefs to cook with. Call it table-to-farm-to-table—and again and again.

Scores of London restaurants are serving vegetables grown in “Michelin-starred” compost made from their own food waste.

Igor Vaintraub, 43, launched Indie Ecology as a start-up in 2011 and today collects food waste in 120-litre sealed bins from more than 80 top restaurants in the capital, including Michelin-starred The Ledbury, Michel Roux’s La Gavroche, and Robin Gill’s The Dairy and Sorella.

He uses natural and pesticide-free processes, based on the Japanese “Bokashi” method using fermented molasses, to turn venues’ high-end leftovers - including meat, fish and dairy - into compost on a 10-acre farm in West Sussex, where he rents plots to chefs who tell him what hand-picked vegetables they want grown.  

The food waste farmers: The Dairy

Robin Gill has long practiced what he calls “guerilla urban farming” at his restaurants, growing salad above his flagship restaurant The Dairy in Clapham, south-west London, while Dean Parker, business partner and head chef at the group’s recently opened Italian restaurant Sorella, Also in Clapham, has planted up a patch of unwanted land nearby. But it was when the pair teamed up with the company called Indie Ecology last year that the idea really started to bear fruit.

We recently started collaborating with Igor Vaintraub, the founder of The Food Waste Farmer. He has been on a mission to help chefs understand the impact they can have on the environment. On a daily basis, he collects our kitchen waste and turns it into compost on his West Sussex farm, where it’s ploughed back into the soil to grow fresh produce.

High-profile chefs are taking on food waste but there’s much more to be done with a third of all food produced in the UK currently going to waste - featuring Indie Ecology. 

Robin Gill’s The Manor will become Sorella in the new year.

Clapham’s modern bistro, The Manor, will close at the end of this year and chef/owner Robin Gill will re-open in late January as a “local Italian restaurant called Sorella.” It will re-open in much the same sprit as both The Manor, and its sister restaurant, The Dairy have done in the three years they’ve been open — with a produce-led focus.