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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Food Waste

OneThird Raises €1.5M for Its Food-Waste-Fighting Tech

Netherlands-based food tech company OneThird announced today it has raised €1.5 million ($1.8 million USD) for its shelf-life-prediction technology that helps growers, retailers, and distributors cut down on food waste. SHIFT Invest and Oost NL participated in the round, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

The new funds will partly go towards further developing OneThird’s tech, which it calls a “fresh produce quality prediction platform.” The platform consists of a handheld scanner, near-infrared sensors, artificial intelligence, and data analytics used in combination to “look inside” the produce and determine its remaining shelf life.

“Our unique prediction technology allows quality inspectors throughout the food supply chain to get immediate feedback about shelf life and other quality parameters of fresh produce and take better decisions,” Marco Snikkers, founder of OneThird, said in today’s press release. 

OneThird says that its technology can work in multiple stages of the supply chain. Growers, for example, can use the platform to determine where they should ship different batches of produce. Distributors can use it to make routing decisions, while retailers can train their staff to assess the freshness of produce in the store.

The point of all this, of course, is to cut down on food waste. As underscored by the OneThird company name, a third of all the world’s food goes to waste each year, with $408 billion spent in the U.S. alone to grow, process, transport, and store food that is never consumed. The waste has a number of consequences, from environmental degradation to people going hungry to lost money for retailers, distributors, and growers.

OneThird joins a growing list of companies bringing a variety of food-waste-fighting solutions to market, from Hazel’s packaging inserts to food redistribution companies like Too Good to Go to Apeel’s edible coating.

OneThird will also use its new funds to expand retail pilots of its platform and build out its technical team by acquiring AI specialist firm Impact Analytics.

Hazel Technologies Raises $70M in Series C Funding to Fight Food Waste

Hazel Technologies announced today it has raised $70 million in Series C funding. The round was co-led by the Pontifax Global Food and Agriculture Technology Fund and Temasek. S2G Ventures, Pangea Ventures, Rhapsody Venture Partners, Asahi Kasai Ventures, Jordan Park Group, and the Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham Foundation also participated. Including the Series C round, Hazel has raised $87 million to date, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Hazel is among those companies using technology to extend the shelf life of fruits and vegetables and in doing so cut down on food waste. Its packaging insert, called a sachet, gets placed in bulk boxes of produce after harvest. The sachet emits 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP) gas to inhibit ethylene, which plants produce they age. Different crops have different respiration rates and production levels of ethylene, so there are different sachets for different produce types. Currently, Hazel has sachets for 14 different produce types, including avocados, mangos, plums, pears, and cantaloupe. In December of 2020, the company announced Hazel Root, designed to slow the growth of sprouts in potatoes and other root vegetables.  

The company said that in 2021, its products will be used with “over 6.3 billion pounds” of fresh produce, preventing more than 500 million pounds of food from going to the landfill. 

In 2019, 35 percent of all food in the United States went unsold or uneaten, according to the most recent numbers from nonprofit ReFed. Both national and international goals aim to cut food waste in half by 2030. To do that, waste will have to be reduced at every step of the supply chain, from the farm itself all the way down refrigerators inside the average person’s home.

Hazel’s technology currently aims to prevent loss and waste earlier in the supply chain, just after harvest. Apeel is the other notable competitor here, though it has a completely different approach to extending the lifespan of produce that involves coating individual pieces of produce with a plant-based protection.

Hazel hinted that funds from the Series C round could go towards commercializing a solution meant for further down the food supply chain, at consumer-facing levels like retail and restaurants. 

ReFed and Others Introduce a New Policy Action Plan to Fight Food Waste

Several organizations banded together this week to release the US Food Loss & Waste Policy Action Plan, which calls on the Biden administration and Congress to take more action when it comes to fighting food waste. ReFed, the World Wildlife Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic (FLPC) are founding supporters of the new plan.

Between 30 and 40 percent of all food produced is lost or wasted, with $408 billion spent in the U.S. alone to grow, process, transport, and store food that is never consumed, according to an email from ReFed sent to The Spoon. Food waste is also a major contributor to climate change, with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimating its global footprint to be 3.3 billion tons of CO2 equivalent of greenhouse gases.

“Addressing this challenge is essential to building a regenerative and resilient food system that helps to mitigate climate change, reverse nature loss, and delivery positive outcomes for both producers and consumers,” notes the new plan.

To do that, the above organizations have compiled a list of recommendations for Congress and the Biden administration that would aid in the goal of reducing food waste and loss by 50 percent by 2030 (in accordance with the UN SDG Target 12.3.1). 

The US Food Loss & Waste Policy Action plan makes five recommendations, as noted by ReFed’s email: 

  • Invest in the infrastructure to measure, rescue, recycle, and prevent organic waste from entering landfills and incinerators
  • Expand incentives to institutionalize surplus food donation and strengthen regional supply chains
  • Assert the US Government’s leadership on FLW globally and domestically
  • Educate and activate consumers via private and public food waste behavior change campaigns
  • Require a national date labeling standard

The plan, which you can download and read in full here, outlines each of these recommendations and delves into specifics as to what action steps might be taken by Congress and the Administration. 

ReFed earlier this year unveiled its new Insights Engine, an online hub for both data and insights around the global food waste problem. It also includes an extensive database of companies innovating up and down the food supply chain to combat the country’s food waste issues.

Meanwhile, other notable supporters of the new Action Plan include Kroger, Unilever, Hellmann’s, and many other food companies.

Two Good and Full Harvest Team Up With Chef Marcus Samuelsson to Fight Food Waste in Restaurants

Two Good Yogurt today announced a new food waste initiative the company has launched in partnership with Chef Marcus Samuelsson and food rescue company Full Harvest. The partnership aims to get more restaurants to cook with rescued produce in their kitchens, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Chef Marcus Samuelsson will lead the campaign by using produce rescued by Full Harvest at his NYC restaurant Red Rooster Harlem during Earth Week (April 19–24). The campaign will also support Two Good’s One Cup, Less Hunger initiative, which donates a portion of the proceeds from its yogurt product to City Harvest food banks.

Other restaurants are invited to email wastelessfeedmore@twogoodyogurt.com to get involved with Samuelsson’s Earth Week campaign. 

“We all know that food is [a] number one reason for climate change,” Samuelsson told me over the phone recently, adding that chefs’ carbon footprints are impacted by which companies they choose to supply their ingredients and what happens to leftovers and unused parts of the food. 

Roughly 1.3 billion tons of edible food goes to waste each year, and some of this is surplus produce or produce considered too “cosmetically unfit” for sale. There are many companies nowadays that rescue these unwanted food items to keep them out of landfills, including Imperfect Foods and Misfits Market. Full Harvest, however, is slightly different in that it sells directly to food businesses, rather than consumers. 

The company first partnered with Two Good in December 2020 to make flavored yogurt using rescued fruits, including lemons. 

Along with Samuelsson, these companies are hoping that the new initiative will familiarize more chefs with the concept of rescued food items and get more of them using the method, educating consumers in the process.

Of food waste in general, Samuelsson noted that fighting it has to be “as easy and accessible for consumers as possible.” 

ReGrained Launches New Cookie Dough with Doughp and Partners with Future Food Funds in Japan

ReGrained, an ingredient company that upcycles spent brewery grain, and Doughp, an e-commerce site for gourmet cookie dough, partnered to create a new cookie dough flavor that incorporates Regrained SuperGrain flour. The new flavor launched April 1 on DoughP’s website.

The cookie dough collaboration is called “Beast Mode Brownie”. With the addition of ReGrained Supergrain +, the protein content is double the amount of Doughp’s regular doughs, and the fiber content is six times higher. Dan Kurzrock, the cofounder of ReGrained, said that the company envisions many collaborations like this in the future. “A lot of people perceive us as a consumer goods company because we’ve launched a few products and packaged goods, championing upcycled foods, but really we’re an ingredient company powered by food technology,” Kurzrock told me by phone this week.

Additionally, ReGrained announced its partnership with and investment from Future Foods Fund in Japan at the beginning of March. The investment was not disclosed, but it will be used to create collaborations with food companies in Japan to launch new products in this market.

ReGrained uses spent grain from craft breweries, with mixture of about 95% barley, with some wheat and rye (one six-pack of beer uses about one pound of grain, so there is plenty of spent grain to go around throughout the country). The company has a patent on the way it upcycles spent grain, and its final product is a flour called ReGrained SuperGrained+. The flour has the same protein as almond flour, is prebiotic, and contains three times more fiber than whole wheat flour.

Kurzrock is the officer on the board of the Upcycled Food Association, which includes around 150 companies that use upcycled food for food or beauty products. Within this association, a few other companies use spent grain from breweries to create new food products. Rise also makes high protein and high fiber flour, as well as baking mixes, granola, and brownies. The Upcycled Grain Project makes a variety of bars and crackers. Leashless Labs uses beer grains to make dog treats.

ReGrained’s current products include several different flavors of snack puffs, which can be purchased on its website for $3.99 a bag. The cookie dough collaboration will be available for at least the rest of this quarter, and a two-pack of 16oz containers costs $39.

Apeel Unites Avocado Suppliers Through an Expanded Network Fighting Food Waste

Apeel Sciences announced today that more than 20 leading suppliers from the global avocado industry have joined its network in an effort to keep more food out of landfills. New partners from the U.S., Latin America, and Europe will use Apeel’s plant-based coating technology that extends the life of fruits and vegetables, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. Doing so will further reduce food waste at consumer-facing levels like retail and the home.

Apeel’s technology, which is a food-safe powder coating made from plant oils, acts as a barrier that keeps water and oxygen out of the produce items to which it is applied. While the company is working with a few different produce types, among them asparagus and citrus fruits — it’s best known for its avocado coating. Apeel-coated avocados can be found in major U.S. grocery stores. The company said today that in 2020, it kept roughly 5 million avocados out of the landfill, and promises “much greater impacts” in 2021.

Keeping food out of landfills isn’t just a matter of saving grocery retailers and consumers money (though that’s an important benefit). Food waste is a leading contributor to climate change, and produce is one of the most common types of foods to go to waste. Recently, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) found that 14 percent of the world’s food is lost between the harvest and retail stages of the supply chain.

Apeel’s technology builds time into that food supply chain by extending the shelf life of produce that’s in transit and, depending on the region it’s in, may not have the advantage of cold chain infrastructure to aid in the preservation process. And as CEO James Rogers told me last year, building this time into the supply chain allows produce to reach exporters before it goes bad. Meanwhile, joining Apeel’s network can mean greater access to retail markets for many suppliers. 

“[Food is] only valuable if the underlying infrastructure is there to make it valuable,” he said.

Among those suppliers joining the Apeel network are El Parque in Chile and Agricola Cerro Prieto in Peru. In the U.S., companies like Calavo, Del Monte, and West Pak have also joined the network.

Eat the Change Launches Jerky Made From Upcycled Mushrooms

Mushrooms naturally have a meaty texture and savory flavor, which makes them perfect as an ingredient for plant-based meat alternatives, so it’s no surprise that companies in the alt-protein space are using them to create everything from bacon to steak. One company, Eat the Change, recently joined the list of players with the launch its plant-based jerky made from mushrooms.

Eat the Change was founded by Seth Goldman, founder of Honest Tea and chair of the board at Beyond Meat, and Spike Mendelson, a celebrity chef and restauranteur. To celebrate the launch of the company’s mushroom jerky, I was invited to a virtual tasting, where I got to sample the five flavors of jerky: hickory smokehouse, habanero bbq, maple mustard, sea salt + cracked black pepper, and teriyaki ginger. (Maple mustard is my favorite!) Besides being eaten straight out of the bag, the jerky can also be used in sandwiches, noodle dishes, and other recipes.

Organic crimini and portobello mushrooms are the base of the jerky, and the company uses imperfect mushrooms cosmetically unfit for retail that would otherwise get thrown away. The mushrooms are marinated, and then instead of using liquid smoke flavoring, the company actually smokes the mushrooms over hickory branches. The jerky naturally has high amounts of several B vitamins, and one bag contains 4 grams of protein.

Although plant-based burgers get a lot of attention, there is room for expansion in the plant-based jerky space. Several other companies are also using mushrooms as the key ingredient for their plant-based jerky. Moku Foods uses king oyster mushrooms, while Pan’s Mushroom Jerky uses shiitake. Akua uses both seaweed and mushrooms to create its plant-based jerky.

Eat the Change mushroom jerky is currently available in 300 stores nationwide, including Whole Foods, Erewhon, MOM’s Organic Market, Fresh Market, and Stop & Shop. It is also available for purchase on the company’s website, and the retail price is around $5.99 for a 2 oz bag.

Food Tech News: Electrolyte Beer and Food Waste Jet Fuel

Welcome to the weekend, and your weekly Food Tech News round-up. If you indulged in too many Irish stouts this past Wednesday for St. Patrick’s Day, you might want to try some electrolyte-infused beer over the weekend. In addition to health-conscious beer, we also have news on food waste being considered for jet fuel and a plant-based egg company in Singapore.

Breweries are infusing beer with electrolytes and healthy ingredients

Do you like your beer with a twist of lime? Or how about with an infusion of electrolytes? A few breweries in the U.S are offering low-ABV beers infused with electrolytes and other nutritious ingredients. Zelus Beer Company (Massachusetts) was founded by a triathlete, and the brewery produces low-alcohol beer made with calcium, potassium, and different salts. Harpoon Brewery (Massachusetts) makes a beer with Mediterannean sea salt, chia seeds, and buckwheat. Mispillion River Brewing (Delaware) has a Berliner Weisse on tap that is infused with berries and a variety of undisclosed electrolytes. These beers are geared towards those who follow an active and healthy lifestyle but still want to enjoy a beer without feeling the negative side effects of alcohol. We’re not sure if they will actually rehydrate lost electrolytes, but an ice-cold beer after a hard workout is delicious regardless.

Photo from Unsplash

Commercial aviation industry considers using food waste for fuel

Taking a trip by plane adds a lot to your carbon footprint, especially if that trip is international. To combat the unsustainable nature of traveling by plane, the commercial aviation industry is looking into alternative options for jet fuel. One that has been presented in a study conducted by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is the use of volatile fatty acids derived from “wet waste.” Food waste, animal manure, and wastewater are the components of wet waste, and researchers extracted volatile fatty acids (VFAs) from this mix. This possible alternative can reduce food waste going to the landfill, carbon dioxide emissions, and soot released into the air by 34 percent.

Photo from Float Foods’ Instagram

Plant-based egg start-up Float Foods receives Temasek grant

Float Foods is a Singapore-based start-up that has developed a whole plant-based egg product, and this week the company received a grant from the Temasek Foundation. The amount of the grant was undisclosed, and it came from Temasek’s Ecosperity Innovations Grant, which aims to assist start-ups with an emphasis on sustainability in Singapore. The company’s proprietary product is made from legumes and called OnlyEg. Float Foods says it is the first to create a whole plant-based egg product in Asia; other plant-based eggs typically come in a powder or liquid form. Float Foods aims to bring its product on shelves in Singapore in 2022.

Imperfect Foods Will Be a Net-Zero Carbon Company by 2030

Online grocer Imperfect Foods announced today its pledge to become a net-zero carbon operation by 2030. Via a press release sent to The Spoon, the company claims this timeline is 10 years ahead of most major retailers and 20 years ahead of the Paris Agreement Deadline.

Imperfect began as a service that rescued surplus fruits and veggies from supermarkets to sell at discounted prices to customers. A few successful fundraises later, the company is a full-fledged online grocer selling not just rescued produce but also meat, dairy, and pantry staples from other environmentally conscious companies.

To track its carbon footprint, Imperfect has partnered with Watershed, a software platform that measures a business’s carbon footprint across every touchpoint of its supply chain. Speaking in today’s press release, Imperfect said that through Watershed’s platform, the company can see which parts of its supply chain are emitting greenhouse gases and redesign operations based on that information.

Imperfect laid out a few steps for going net-zero carbon. It plans to have its first “zero-waste-to-landfill” facility operational by 2022, and a total of six such facilities operational by 2025. All six fulfillment centers will run off renewable power by 2026, and the company’s vehicle fleet will be electric by 2027. Finally, improving regional sourcing by 15 percent is a near-term goal, slated for 2022.

Imperfect’s announcement today is the latest in a string of recent stories about food companies’ various sustainability efforts, from Just Salad’s zero waste delivery aspirations to Burger King’s reusable cup program. Sweetgreen a chain that has pledged to go carbon neutral by 2027, is also using Watershed to track its carbon footprint.

There are also a few grocery-specific developments around sustainability of late. Kroger’s Zero Hunger/Zero Waste program addresses many sustainability issues, and Aldi says it will shift to sustainable packaging by 2025. Walmart, meanwhile, has a goal of reaching zero emissions by 2040.

For its part, Imperfect’s goal is to go beyond just sustainable food sourcing and “ensure [that] each internal process ladders up to an operationally net-zero carbon business model.”

 

UNEP: 931M Tons of Food Sold to Consumers Gets Wasted

A total of 931 million tons, or 17 percent, of food sold at consumer-facing levels was thrown out in 2019, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and partner organization WRAP. This includes food sold to retail (e.g., the grocery store) and foodservice businesses, as well as consumer households.

The Food Waste Index 2021 report, released this week, examine’s the world’s progress on the UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 12.3, which aims to halve per capita global food waste at retail and consumer levels.

In its own words, the Index 2021 report “sheds new light on the magnitude of food waste, and on the prevalence of household food waste on all continents, irrespective of country income levels.”

It also notes that until now, the scale of the world’s food waste problem hasn’t been fully understood. A previous 2011 estimate from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) famously found that one-third of all the world’s food goes to waste. However, researchers acknowledged “a lack of household food waste data outside of Europe and North America at the time of their estimate. Now, the Index 2021 suggests that consumer-level food waste is “more than twice the previous FAO estimate” and that it is found “to be broadly similar across country income groups. This deviates from the oft-told narrative that consumer-level food waste mainly happens in developed nations, while food production and transportation losses are the territory of developing countries. 

Mapping 152 food waste data points across 54 countries, the report also found:

  • Of the 931 million tons of food wasted at consumer levels, 61 percent came from households, 26 percent from foodservice, and 13 percent from retail. 
  • Roughly 8–10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are associated with food not consumed.
  • A total of 690 million people worldwide were hungry in 2019, and that number is expected to rise.
  • Worldwide, 3 billion people “cannot afford a healthy diet.”

The report does more than simply highlight these rather bleak statistics. In an effort to support SDG 12.3, it also includes a methodology by which countries can measure their food waste at consumer-facing levels. “Countries using this methodology will generate strong evidence to guide a national strategy on food waste prevention, that is sufficiently sensitive to pick up changes in food waste over two- or four-year intervals, and that enables meaningful comparisons between countries globally.”

Reducing food waste can cut greenhouse gas emissions, lessen pollution, conserve land and other resources, and make food more available worldwide. The UNEP’s new analysis and methodology aims to do that by helping more countries around the world take actions driven by more and better data about food waste.

Bread to Booze: Misadventure Distillery Makes Vodka from Surplus Baked Goods

What if you could drink booze and help save the world by reducing food waste? That may be slightly hyperbolic, but Vista, California-based Misadventure Distillery aims to reduce the amount of food waste that enters the landfill by producing vodka made from surplus baked goods.

Misadventure Vodka is distilled twelve times and contains 40 percent ABV, and the main difference between it and other vodka is that instead of using grains or potatoes as the main ingredient, it uses unsold baked goods.

I spoke with Whit Rigali, one of the co-founders of Misadventure Distillery, to learn more about the company’s food waste-based vodka and mission. Rigali, a former bartender, and Sam Chereskin, an agricultural economist, wanted to start a distillery, but do so with sustainability in mind. When the two read the National Resources Defense Council’s report that revealed that 40 percent of food in the US goes to waste, they knew food waste was the sustainability issue they wanted to tackle and launched the company in 2017.

The co-founders began working with food banks in San Diego to gather surplus bread, pastries, and other baked goods that had been sent in. Food banks typically do not distribute these types of food because they are considered empty calories, but these sugar and starch-laden foods are perfect for creating alcohol. Misadventure Vodka can essentially use any type of baked good, like bread, bagels, donuts, croissants, cake, and cookies, but the company tries to separate out items like buttery garlic bread for example.

During the distillation process, gluten and most of the baked good flavors are removed. However, Rigali said that Misadventure’s vodka still retains a subtle vanilla flavor and has a silky mouthfeel. The leftover waste from the vodka-making process is donated to a compost facility local to the area. Rigali said, “If everybody in the U.S. switched to drinking Misadventure, we would divert the same amount of carbon dioxide as a forest the size of Yosemite National Park.”

It is estimated that 1.3 billion tons of food are wasted every year globally, so there is a huge opportunity for companies to make edible food and drinks from this waste. A company in Sweden, Gotland Spirits, recently launched a new vodka made from pasta, bread, crackers, and milk powder that would otherwise be wasted. Toast Ale, a brewery based in the UK, uses bread that would end up in the landfill to make it beer.

Misadventure Vodka can be purchased on the company’s website with shipping available to 40 states in the U.S., and one 750ml bottle costs $24.99. Additionally, the product can be purchased at local retailers and restaurants in San Diego county. The company has raised an undisclosed amount of funding.

Kroger’s Zero Hunger/Zero Waste Foundation Is Taking Applications for Its Innovation Accelerator

Startups, take note. The Kroger Co. Zero Hunger | Zero Waste Foundation (aka, the “Foundation”) is now taking applications for the second cohort of its Innovation Fund. The program, done in partnership with Village Capital, looks for companies developing new technologies, processes, and other solutions that combat food waste.

The Foundation says this could include rescuing and upcycling “imperfect” food. “Upcycled food is the next frontier in recovering and repurposing food that may otherwise go to landfills,” the Foundation said in a statement this week. In this context, upcycling could mean either using discarded food to create new foods (e.g., upcycled cookies), ingredients, or even meal kits. The program also lumps food rescue — selling surplus food to consumers — as part of the upcycling process, too.

Both areas are becoming more popular in the U.S., with companies like Imperfect Foods, Misfits Market, Renewal Mill, and Goodfish leading the way. Imperfect was actually a part of the first cohort for the Innovation Fund, along with Food Forest, mobius, Replate, and others. About 400 startups applied for the first cohort, so we can expect as many if not more vying for a spot in this next installment of the program.

The six-month-long Kroger program includes one week of virtual programming followed by monthly cohort sessions. The entire program runs from late May through November 2021.

A total of 10 startups will be selected from the applicant pool. Selected companies each receive $100,000 in upfront seed grant funding, with the chance for an additional $100,000 grant based on “achievement of identified program milestones.” Virtual workshops that cover investment readiness and technical skill development, and also provides networking opportunities with mentors and potential investors.

Two startups of the chosen 10 will be picked at the end of six months to receive an additional $250,000 in funding.

Applications are open until April 1, 2021.