Thibaud van der Steen

Thibaud was not always a waste warrior. “My parents are entrepreneurs, and I trained to become one too, but I always worked as an employee”, he says. “In early 2020, during Covid, Frank Haagen, Jacco Grinwis, my partner Carlijn Kloet and I were looking for something positive to do. Borders closed, and many growers and producers were suddenly left with unsold produce.”

They began helping wherever they could: nuns with surplus wine, monks with cheese they could not sell, a pumpkin grower stuck with thousands of pumpkins. They shared these stories and sold the products online and through Covid-proof pick-up points. “That’s when we realised that helping others was making us happy too.”

What began as a temporary response soon “got a bit out of hand”, Thibaud says smiling. Starting a company was never the plan. But when they met Stijn Markusse – who had already been running a successful food enterprise for thirteen years – they realised they might be onto something much bigger.

Despite the success of No Waste Army, Thibaud is clear-eyed about the limits of their impact. “What we’re really doing is applying plasters”, he says,”we’re not solving the problem itself. At the very start of the chain – where we operate – farmers are sometimes forced to discard entire harvests because produce fails to meet cosmetic standards. Wageningen University is currently researching the scale of this, but estimates suggest that around 15 per cent of everything grown never even leaves the farm.”

“If you really look into this, you encounter some truly bizarre scenes”, Thibaud continues. “Farmers who have worked all season on a beautiful crop, only to see it rejected at the last moment for some absurd cosmetic reason. Farmers find themselves in a vulnerable position: five large buying parties hold the power. If your produce doesn’t meet their standards, they simply source it from the neighbour, leaving you with the loss. That’s what we want to put a stop to. And honestly, it wouldn’t take much – just the will. But that’s precisely what’s missing among the big players. They are focused primarily on market share and profit. It’s a shame they don’t see that the marketing value of doing things differently could be enormous.”

“Our ultimate goal is system change”, Thibaud explains. “Our food box, the stories we bring to light and the awareness we create are merely tools to get there. That change is essential, because as climate extremes intensify, nature will give us more imperfections – not perfectly straight cucumbers and courgettes.”

With a growing team, No Waste Army has now reached a point where that ambition can be pursued more directly. “Our chain-change commander is increasingly sharing stages with the big players, exposing the flaws in the system and putting concrete solutions on the table. They – not us – need to make sure that products currently wasted actually end up on supermarket shelves. Eighty per cent of what you buy there is ultra-processed junk. If you can sell that, you can sell a crooked carrot too.”

“We genuinely believe that if the first supermarket embraces us, we can put an end to the waste of ‘imperfect’ food together”, Thibaud says. “Of course, consumers need to come along as well. But as a small player, we already rescue large volumes of fruit and vegetables. Supermarkets could do the same – and far more effectively. There are plenty of international examples showing that it can be done. The real question is: who will step forward first? We’re ready to join forces.”

Want to prevent food waste? Buy your groceries directly from a local regenerative farm. You can find them on our map.