A University of Aberdeen graduate who was inspired to reduce food waste has returned to the classroom to deliver a lesson in creativity and innovation to current students.
Elliott Martens, who graduated in 2020 with a BSc in Plant and Soil Science, created Two Raccoons by using soft fruit waste from businesses across the north-east to make different flavours of wine including strawberry, pear, mango and orange.
Elliott, who runs Two Raccoons along with Lasse Melgaard, who is currently studying at the University, said: “We found there were a lot of soft fruits being wasted in Scotland and wanted to do what we could to reduce this. We started off brewing in a flat and the business has grown from there. Our aim is to be as zero waste as possible and hopefully our journey helps to inspire others.”
Elliott was joined in the classroom by Anna Kebke, who has been part of a group that set up Foodsharing, part of Shared Planet Society, which provides food that would otherwise go to waste to students at the University.
Both began to come up with the innovative ideas, while taking Dr John Baird’s course Imagination, Creativity and Innovation in Science.
Dr Baird added: “I am very grateful to Elliott and Anna for returning to the School of Biological Sciences to show our current students how it can be done. What they have achieved in a short space of time is fantastic and will no doubt inspire future businesses. The course aims to inspire creativity in business and other arenas and that is what Elliott and Anna have demonstrated. Elliott wrote to me last semester to say ‘the creativity course put me on an amazing trajectory I couldn't have expected.”, which is when I asked if he’d come back to teach our current students. He said he’d be delighted and so was I!”