Five tons of green fish on the plate

The project Five tons of green fish on the plate has proven that it is possible to grow an environmentally friendly and flavorful Swedish fish on a large scale, while at the same time making use of an unused raw material resource; food waste from industry. The result is Sweden's first rainbow trout fed with circular fish-feed based on insects. The feed has up to 70% lower carbon footprint than conventional feed.

Instead of imported soybeans and imported wild-caught fish, the green rainbow trouts were raised on a circular-based fish feed that consists of raw materials that are almost exclusively produced in Sweden, and that are not very attractive for human consumption.

One of the main ingredients in the feed is insects – that have themselves been fed on organic waste in the form of shells, kernels and bread scraps from the food industry, that would otherwise have been discarded. The fish feed also uses farmed mussels and sea urchins that have eaten phytoplankton. These ingredient thereby extract nutrients from the sea, and contribute to reducing eutrophication.

The project has proven that it is possible to use waste on a large scale as a resource and grow seafood that contributes to reducing eutrophication in the Baltic Sea. The project has been run by Axfoundation and Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU). In collaboration with actors from across the entire production and distribution chains, we have built an infrastructure to convert vegetable residues into a quality raw protein material that can be used in animal feed.