At de Stadsgroenteboer, Andres and his friends (whom he met at university) are growing vegetables in the outskirts of Amsterdam to feed the city with organic, local, and seasonal food. It was during the first COVID-19 lockdown and the closing of restaurants that Andres saw surrounding farmers unable to sell their products. Andres started to take action by purchasing their surplus at a fair price to transform them into ready to eat plant-based products and sauces, saving great organic and fresh vegetables from waste and extending their shelf-life.

Andres has multiple backgrounds and a holistic knowledge about food. Born in Colombia, Andres went to cooking school in Le Cordon Bleu in France and studied gastronomic science in Italy, where he learned agriculture and horticulture principles alongside chemistry, microbiology, and many other aspects of food. This allows him to build local and circular solutions for growing and consuming food in Amsterdam - a bridge between farming and cooking practices. From growing organic and local vegetables through regenerative agriculture; to transforming surplus into tasty and longer shelf-life preparations; and closing the loop by collecting organic waste from local restaurants, food makers and shops to be composted.

For the last four months Andres has been picking up our entire ‘wastage' of coffee chaff, which accumulates from six to eight bags a week. Thanks to Andres we completely stopped throwing it away. He tells me that organic waste has a negative and repellent connotation in our society when it is an important matter in our lives. Coffee chaff is used in his farm for compost and mulch, because of its amazing properties. It is great to protect fields against slugs - a major issue in humid countries such as the Netherlands – which are repelled by caffeine. It is also a great source of nitrogen for plants. Andres believes that his mission is to use his knowledge to create and set examples for circular practices. His solutions are simple and traditional ways to limit and capture CO2 emission from food: to follow the natural carbon cycle. Instead of releasing CO2 in the atmosphere while decomposing, the organic matter is composted, it enriches the soil which grows plants and captures more CO2 into the soil while releasing oxygen.

Roots, Rice & Beans, which is Andres' project behind the collection of organic waste, farm surplus and the production of tasty long shelf-life food, has now launched a crowdfunding to buy its own robust cargo bike. The goal is to increase the amount of organic waste that they can collect around the city, for example coffee grounds at LOT61 cafes, while continuing to supply farm products to the kitchen and kitchen products to shops. His project has already collected 10 tons of organic waste in Amsterdam so far, helping Lot61 and many others to become more circular and aware of their organic waste.

Click here for more information on Andres' recent crowdfunding campaign.