India, the world’s second-largest producer of rice, is sitting on a mountain of raw material, without realistic options to cash in on it. So each year, farmers burn around 90 million tons of rice straw, releasing a considerable amount of C02 in the process. Indian and Dutch public and private organisations have created the Biomass India consortium to convert this waste into climate-positive products.

Rotterdam-based Rotterzwam collects coffee grounds from local pubs, large corporations and restaurants. Then they cultivate mushrooms in it and sell the produce to customers in the Rotterdam area.

On August 22, 2020, the first ever refrigerated container of Ethiopian avocados was loaded on a train to Djibouti, to be shipped to Europe. It marked an important milestone for the development of a cool logistics network in East Africa.