The Upcycled Food Association is turning surplus ingredients into climate solutions, but only if consumers know what upcycled food is. With a 2023 Storytelling Grant from the J.W. Couch Foundation, UFA produced a series of cinematic commercials designed to bring upcycled products into the mainstream and accelerate a global movement against food waste.
Picture a perfectly good apple, a handful of spent grain from a brewery, or the pulp left behind after pressing oat milk. Multiply that by billions. Every year, roughly a third of the world's food is lost or wasted — a staggering inefficiency that pumps greenhouse gases into our atmosphere and squanders the land, water, and labor it took to grow it in the first place. But what if that surplus could be transformed into something delicious, nutritious, and climate-positive?
That's the vision driving the Upcycled Food Association (UFA), a Denver-based nonprofit founded in 2019 with a bold premise: the food system can be redesigned so that every ingredient is elevated to its highest and best use.
A Movement Built on a Simple Idea
UFA emerged from a growing recognition among food entrepreneurs, scientists, and sustainability advocates that food waste isn't just an ethical problem — it's one of the most powerful, underutilized levers we have to fight climate change. Project Drawdown ranks reducing food waste among the top solutions for cutting global emissions.
Rather than tackle the crisis policy by policy, UFA chose to harness market forces. By coordinating hundreds of companies worldwide, certifying upcycled products, and championing the industry, the organization is building an economic engine where every purchase becomes a small act of climate action.
There's just one problem: you can't buy what you don't understand.
The Awareness Gap
UFA's own research revealed a striking opportunity — and obstacle. Roughly 80% of consumers say they would be interested in buying upcycled products. Yet fewer than 10% know what upcycled food actually is. That gap between curiosity and comprehension is exactly where the movement stalls.
As CEO Turner Wyatt puts it, the math is simple: the more upcycled products people buy, the more food waste will be prevented. But shoppers need to recognize these products on the shelf and understand why they matter.
Telling the Story Through Film
In 2023, the J.W. Couch Foundation partnered with UFA through a Storytelling Grant to close that awareness gap with the most powerful tool available: video. The Foundation brought in Tectonic Video — an award-winning studio trusted by some of the world's most respected nonprofits, with work profiled by The New York Times and recognized with nearly 200 honors — to produce a series of commercials engineered to make upcycled food click for everyday consumers.
Grounded in Tectonic's data-driven Nonprofit Video Index™ methodology, the spots were designed to do more than inform. They were built to inspire — showcasing the variety, quality, and craftsmanship of upcycled products, and inviting viewers to see their grocery carts as instruments of climate change.
While any nonprofit can benefit from video assets, the Upcycled Food Association has a uniquely large interest in these kinds of assets because of our need for widespread consumer education. These amazing videos help us illuminate the need for marketing assets, and we are thrilled with how they turned out."Turner Wyatt, CEO
Why UFA Is Uniquely Positioned
No other organization sits at the intersection UFA occupies. As the certifying body, industry advocate, and consumer educator for the entire upcycled food movement, UFA can speak with one unified voice for hundreds of brands and millions of consumers. The commercials produced through this grant are now shared assets — fueling the marketing efforts of an entire industry, not just a single company.
A Movement Gaining Momentum
With these films now in circulation, the upcycled food movement has a new toolkit to reach the shoppers, retailers, and decision-makers who can scale this solution worldwide. Every viewer who learns what "upcycled" means becomes a potential climate ally. Every product sold prevents waste from reaching a landfill — and prevents methane from reaching the atmosphere.
The Upcycled Food Association is proving that the path to a sustainable food system doesn't require a single silver bullet. It requires storytelling, market coordination, and the belief that the choices on our plates can rewrite the future of our planet. At the J.W. Couch Foundation, we're proud to help carry that story forward — one frame, one shopper, one rescued ingredient at a time.
