Practical information
Description
Timeline
Stakeholders
Strengths and offer
Urban logistics
Positive impacts
Needs
Logistical challenges
Practical information
What?
Alpaca is a non-profit organisation within Propulse Group offering eco-responsible solutions for the events sector: consultancy, food surplus management, waste sorting and waste recovery.
Who?
Alpaca ASBL / Propulse Group. The project mainly targets event organisers, caterers, catering operators and receiving organisations able to redistribute or recover surplus.
Where?
Offices and warehouses: Rue des Sablières 45 box 12, 1435 Mont-Saint-Guibert.
Registered office: Wavre.
Activity in Brussels and at Brussels-based events to be clarified.
When?
The project has been publicly documented at least since 2021.
Contact
hello@propulsegroup.be — +32 478 36 13 03
Resources
propulsegroup.be/alpaca ; circulareconomy.brussels/food-waste-solutions_alpaca-solutions
Description
Alpaca works in the events sector to reduce food waste and better manage the waste produced during events. The project responds to a recurring problem: at the end of an event, catering surplus often exists, but there is rarely a simple system to measure it, collect it quickly, redistribute it or direct it towards appropriate recovery channels.
The interest of Alpaca lies in transforming a flow often handled in a rush — surplus, leftovers, waste, over-ordering — into an organised service. The project combines food recovery, connections with associations, waste sorting and sustainability consultancy. It therefore makes visible a form of logistics usually hidden behind the scenes of the events sector: what remains after the service, how it circulates, who can receive it, and when it becomes either a resource or waste.
Timeline
2021
Food Waste Solutions by Alpaca Solutions is documented by circular economy.brussels.
2024
Alpaca is presented as one of the brands brought together under Propulse Group.
Stakeholders
Event organisers, caterers, catering operators and companies in the events sector, who produce or have to manage food surplus and waste after events.
Alpaca ASBL / Propulse Group, as an operator for consultancy, collection, quantification, sorting and matchmaking.
Receiving associations, whose actual needs can be matched with the food collected.
The circular economy ecosystem, notably through references to Be Circular and circular economy.brussels in public documentation.
Strengths and offer
Transformation of the cost of over-ordering and waste treatment into an organised service for recovery, measurement and redistribution.
Collection and quantification of food surplus after events.
Matching recovered food with receiving associations.
Sorting and recovery of waste produced by events.
Sustainability consultancy to help organisers reduce their impact.
Production of measurable post-event data: surplus volumes, waste, CO2 indicators, useful for communication, social responsibility and the improvement of practices.
Connection of three dimensions that are often treated separately: food surplus, waste and strategic support.
A relevant case for thinking about surplus food flows produced by the events sector as structured logistics, rather than as informal or improvised volunteer recovery.
Urban logistics
How does it work?
Alpaca intervenes on site after an event to collect and quantify food surplus. Recoverable products are matched with the actual needs of associations, while waste is sorted or directed towards recovery channels. The project can also intervene upstream, through consultancy, to help organisers anticipate volumes, limit losses and better organise the end of the event.
Why is it interesting?
Because the events sector produces flows that are highly concentrated in time: a lot of food, a lot of waste, and very little time to decide, sort, transport or redistribute. Alpaca shows that food surplus does not automatically become a resource: it requires rapid coordination, reliable information, receiving partners, appropriate sanitary conditions and logistics capable of acting at the right moment.
Which obstacles does it respond to?
Catering over-ordering, lack of a simple solution to manage surplus, waste treatment costs for organisers, difficulty quickly connecting perishable surplus with a structure able to receive it, and lack of reliable measurement tools to objectify lost volumes.
Identified nodes / obstacles
Transport; temporary storage; sorting; time synchronisation; cold chain; waste management; redistribution; flow measurement; matching the type of food collected with the needs of associations.
Positive impacts
Environment — reduction of food waste, better waste recovery, potential reduction in emissions linked to waste treatment and unnecessary food production.
Space — better organisation of event back-of-house areas, with surplus and waste flows that are less improvised, less cumbersome and easier to read.
Neighbourhood — potential reduction of nuisances linked to the end of events: poorly sorted waste, volumes to be removed in a rush, poorly coordinated logistical movements.
Social relations — creation of links between organisers, caterers, logistics operators and receiving associations; transformation of a private surplus into a resource potentially useful to other structures.