The heir to the throne of England, Prince William, surprised Londoners when he served burgers in a food truck. The YouTube channel, Sorted Food, partnered with the Prince to create a plant-based burger. The video of the team serving burgers was uploaded on the channel on Sunday.
It was part of a promotional activity for the Earthshot Prize scheduled to be held in Singapore in November. The award aims to honour individuals and companies working towards identifying solutions for food sustainability, reduction of air pollution and water pollution and those who provide answers for building a carbon-neutral economy.
There is an India connect here. The burgers used vegetables grown by Hyderabad-based company Kheyti, which was awarded the Earthshot Prize in 2022. A 2021 article by Livemint, titled A greenhouse in a box for small farmers, explains that the Greenhouse-in-a-box created by Kheyti includes “a drip irrigation system, occupies a tenth of an acre and costs less than ₹1 lakh.” The box also comes with the appropriate seeds and fertilizers.
“The world depends on its small-hold farmers and yet their lives are amongst the hardest on earth. Our Greenhouse-in-a-box is empowering farmers in India today,” said founder and CEO Kaushik Kappagantulu to Earthshot. The website Earthshot.org reported, "Today (2022) 1,000 farms have a Kheyti greenhouse, but this is just the start. By 2027, Kheyti wants 50,000 farmers to have a Greenhouse-in-a-Box."
In the video by Sorted Food, chefs curated a special burger using the vegetables grown using Kheyti’s Greenhouse-in-a-box by using potatoes, bell peppers, onions, and cauliflower spiced garlic and chillies to make a patty. The burgers were then offered to customers in packaging made by the UK-based company NotPla, another recipient of the Earthshot prize in 2022. The company makes all-natural packaging using seaweed and plants that are fully bio-degradable, according to their official website (notpla.com).