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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

packaging

NadaMoo! Was Set to Announce New Recyclable Packaging, But Then Learned it Wasn’t so Simple

Almost all ice cream containers, although made mostly of paper, are bound for the landfill in a lot of places because they can’t be recycled. The plastic coating inside the container is the reason why.

As the average American reportedly eats more than 23 pounds of ice cream per year, that waste adds up. But even companies that switch to more sustainable packaging are learning the harsh realities of recycling. Plant-based brand NadaMoo! over the next few months will roll out containers with a coating made from sugarcane-based polyethylene and paperboard sourced from “responsibly managed forest trees.”

But although Evergreen Packaging, the creator of the Sentinel Fully Renewable Ice Cream Board (the official name of the new packaging, which is also used by Oatly and Coconut Bliss. ), said it is the first of its kind and is fully renewable. Though that “fully” comes with some big caveats, as NadaMoo! CEO Daniel Nicholson learned right before the company was set to incorrectly announce that its new packaging could be recycled by customers, a message that would have also appeared on its label.

The materials can only be recycled by the carton supplier, Stanpac, through a recycling partner that breaks down and separates the components. This means that in many places, consumers will still not be able to send these containers to local recycling facilities.

“Our new knowledge of this complexity further reinforces the misconceptions within our society at large in our understanding of how our recycling system works down to the subtle nuances,” Nicholson said in an email statement to The Spoon. “It’s too complex for us to try to oversimplify.” 

Nicholson, however, still celebrates the fact that the packaging is made from more renewable and sustainable components.

“Doing good for our customers and for the overall sustainability of our planet has always been the ethos of who we are as a company,” he said. “By taking these incremental steps to be an even more eco-friendly, sustainable product and company, it is our hope that we will be joined by additional, larger parties in our category to maximize the overall impact of these changes.”

NadaMoo!, in its 14th year of business, creates coconut-based frozen desserts that are sold in thousands of stores across the country, including Target and Walmart locations. It raised capital for the first time in 2017 through a $4 million series A round. Although the company is growing, Nicholson said a lot more needs to be done for the industry to be more sustainable.

“If you combine the sales of Oatly, Coconut bliss and NadaMoo!, if we’re the only ones leading this charge, we have a lot of work to do to push the future of the food business,” Nicholson said. “These problems are massive and the only way to make change is for all of us to invest in change.”

The fact that even more sustainable packaging can’t be recycled in most places illustrates the harsh reality of recycling around the world: many materials aren’t actually recycled. Plastic remains the largest problem, as more than 90 percent of the material ends up as trash. Nestlé’s Häagen-Dazs brand offers a different approach, teaming up with delivery company Loop to create a reusable ice cream container. (In the eggs section, Pete and Gerry’s is testing a reusable container.)

As NadaMoo! shows, even food companies have difficulties understanding the intricacies of recycling, which means we all must work harder if we want to cut down on our waste.

A Snapshot of the 6 Biggest Fast Food Companies’ Sustainability Pledges

Environmental issues are no longer an invisible threat. With temperatures warming, oceans are heating up and extreme weather events such as hurricanes and forest fires, as we’re currently seeing in Australia, are happening more frequently.

There’s only so much individuals can do to lessen our impact on the warming planet, including flying and driving less and cutting back on meat. It’s on governments and businesses, especially corporations, to stave off catastrophe.

As we start off a new decade, let’s take a look at the sustainability pledges of the top fast food companies by revenues. As emissions that result from meat and dairy production are on track to contribute 70 percent of the total allowable greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, the BBC reports, fast food chains’ decisions have a lot of impact on the planet, although most pledges have centered around packaging. As some of the largest brands on the planet, these moves will not only cut back on climate change causing emissions and pollution, but provide an example to other businesses.

1. McDonald’s

The world’s biggest restaurant company in 2018 was the first fast food company to commit to sustainability. McDonald’s pledged that by 2025, “100 percent of McDonald’s guest packaging will come from renewable, recycled, or certified sources,” and also “to recycle guest packaging in 100 percent of McDonald’s restaurants.” For this year, it also set a goal that “100 percent of fiber-based packaging will come from recycled or certified sources where no deforestation occurs.” The company has also invested in a wind farm and a solar farm that it said will produce “more than 2,500 McDonald’s restaurants-worth of electricity.” As far as plant-based options, the Golden Arches is expanding its Beyond Meat test in Canada.

2. Starbucks

According to the coffee giant, “an estimated 600 billion paper and plastic cups are distributed globally,” and Starbucks accounts for an estimated 1 percent of that total. It has set a goal to “double the recycled content, recyclability and compostability, and reusability of our cups and packaging by 2022.” It plans to phase out straws this year. (A small competitor of Starbucks, Blue Bottle, plans to eliminate disposable cups entirely.) Starbucks, which said it has invested in renewable energy, has also set a goal to design, build and operate 10,000 “Greener Stores” globally by 2025. Starbucks offers several plant-based milks, and is expanding its lineup of non-dairy drinks.

3. Subway

The sandwich company hasn’t made any specific pledges, and pins a lot of the responsibility of energy conservation on its franchise operators. Subway offers a meatless Beyond Meat meatball sub. The company says its paper products, including towels, tissues and napkins, are made from 100 percent recycled material. As for the rest of its materials, including cups, wraps, bowls and lids, Subway makes no further commitments to make them more sustainable.

4. Chick-fil-a

The popular chicken restaurant that closes on Sundays also hasn’t issued any major sustainability pledges. The company said last year it is “thoughtfully searching for sustainable design solutions that are recyclable, compostable or contain recycled content — starting with new bowls” made of recyclable PET plastic. Chick-fil-a has committed to reducing construction waste for its new locations. The chain offers no plant-based options.

5. Taco Bell

The Mexican-inspired food chain is the latest to issue a big sustainability pledge. It has committed to “making all consumer-facing packaging recyclable, compostable or reusable by 2025 worldwide,” as well as adding recycling and/or composting bins to all restaurants, “where infrastructure permits.” Last year, it committed to more sustainable beef. Taco Bell has long featured vegetarian and vegan options, and recently made them more prominent on its menu.

6. Burger King

The other burger chain also hasn’t set any firm sustainability commitments for the decade. Rather, it said it will “continuously review our policies on animal welfare, sourcing and environmental impact to ensure that we remain good corporate citizens in the communities we serve.” The company, responding to a Change.org petition, said it will stop giving out plastic toys, but only in the U.K. At least you can get the Impossible Whopper at every U.S. store.

Of course, the companies who did make pledges are not beholden to them. It’s up to investors and consumers to hold each company responsible to do their part to reducing their contributions to climate change.

If any company updates their pledges, we will revisit and update this article.

CuanTec Raises Funds to Turn Scotland’s Seafood Waste into Compostable Packaging

Today CuanTec, the Scottish biotech company that transforms shellfish waste into sustainable packaging, announced it has raised an undisclosed investment round led by Sky Ocean Ventures and Scottish Enterprise. CuanTec will use its new funds to finalize its product, hire new team members and manufacture at pilot production scale.

The idea for CuanTec first came about in central Scotland in 2013 when its founder, who has since moved on from the company, realized how much shellfish waste was produced in his town. That waste typically went into a landfill or was incinerated and ended back up in the ocean as dead weight. However, shellfish’s exoskeletons actually contain a very valuable molecule called chitin, a natural polymer which was already used in a number of applications, particularly in the medical field.

In order to extract chitin, companies have traditionally relied on harsh chemicals which aren’t great for the environment. Cuantec scientists developed a new method for extracting chitin from shellfish that relies on fermentation — similar to beer brewing — instead of chemicals. The new technology transform the chitin into a more soluble form called chitosan, which is then mixed with biopolymers to create a flexible film which can be used as food packaging. Called Cuansave, the resulting packaging is compatible within 90 days.

The entire process is waste-free: the main byproduct of CuanTec’s chitosan product is a high-protein liquid the company is developing into a feed for salmon and other fish. As an added bonus, Cuansave is anti-microbial and can extend product shelf life. For example, Paula Duffy, part of CuanTec’s marketing team, told me that Cuansave can extend the shelf life of fresh salmon by two days. “We’re using seafood waste to prevent seafood waste,” she explained over the phone.

Photo: CuanTec

Since its launch in 2017, CuanTec has created two lab spaces in Motherwell and Oban, both in Scotland. They have established partnerships with fisheries around Scotland to source shellfish waste and are currently perfecting their packaging and producing at relatively minimal lab-scale. Duffy told me they are in the process of scaling up and will be able to make 100-liter batches of chitosan by 2020. She wouldn’t give exact cost details but said that CuanSave is priced competitively with traditional plastic.

Though it’s still at a pretty nascent stage, the company has already entered a partnership with U.K. mega-retailer Waitrose. Cuansave will initially be used in Waitrose’s Duchy of Cornwall product range in 2021, starting with salmon. If successful, CuanTec will expand use of its packaging for more products. This is all assuming that Cuansave gets the food-safe regulatory stamp of approval, which Duffy told me they expect by mid-2020.

CuanTec is part of a raft of companies developing products to nix plastic packaging. Decomer makes a biodegradable packaging from plants that’s water-soluble, while Evoware subs in algae for plastic. On a larger scale, supermarket giants — including Waitrose — are also experimenting with compostable packaging for pre-made meals or refillable containers for certain popular CPG products.

All these innovations can’t come too soon. Only 14 percent of plastic packaging is ever recycled. The vast majority ends up in landfills or our oceans — so much so that, by weight, there could be more plastic than fish in our oceans by 2050.

That’s why CuanTec’s closed-loop technology could be such a boon. Cuansave cuts out pesky plastic packaging, sure, but it also upcycles a waste product and keeps food fresher, longer. It’s still early days for the company — this is their first real fundraise and they only have a team of 14 — but if they can indeed make their product cost-competitive with traditional plastic, I’m guessing (and hoping) we will start to see more seafood packaged in seafood waste.

The Loop Launches Reusable Packaging Program in the U.S., Adds Kroger and Walgreens as Partners

We were excited when The Loop announced its re-useable packaging program in January of this year, as a number of big name CPG companies like Pepsi, Nestlé and Unilever had hopped on board. Today, The Loop announced that its waste reducing program has now launched here in the U.S., and added Kroger and Walgreens to its roster of partners.

As a refresher, The Loop (an initiative of waste management company Terracycle) sells name-brand CPG products in a way that harkens back to the milkman of yore. Products like ice cream, pancake mix and orange juice are sold in re-useable containers made from materials like metal or glass. These products ship directly to consumers who, after using them, put the empty containers back into the tote they arrived in, and The Loop picks everything back up to be sterilized, re-filled and re-sold.

While our plastic waste problem is huge in this country right now, sadly, The Loop’s availability is not. It’s initial pilot programs will only be available in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S., specifically New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Washington, D.C.

If you are lucky enough to live in one of the select areas, you can visit loopstore.com, thekrogerco.com/loop or walgreens.com/loop to place an order. Though the press release didn’t mention it, CNN reports that customers will be able to pick up their Loop orders and drop off the empties at Kroger and Walgreens. And while all purchases happen exclusively online right now, Loop’s press release did say that down the road, there may be an option to purchase Loop products in stores at select Kroger and Walgreens markets.

The Loop is launching at the right time as companies across the food industry are looking at ways to reduce their plastic use. Earlier this week, Whole Foods announced it was getting rid of plastic straws, reducing the size of its plastic produce bags, and is no longer using hard plastic containers for its rotisserie chickens. And on a much broader scale, the EU voted to ban single-use plastics by 2021.

Today’s move by Kroger also reaffirms why we put them on The Spoon’s Food Tech 25: Companies Creating the Future of Food list this week. While we don’t know how U.S. consumers will react to The Loop’s re-packaging program, at least Kroger (and The Loop and Walgreens) is recognizing the issue of plastic waste and experimenting with a way to help reduce it.

ReGrained Grapples with the Least Worst Option While Fighting Waste

Upcycling company Regrained is learning that doing the right thing is seldom the same as doing the easy thing, especially when it comes to tackling food waste. The company’s mission is to “align the food we eat with the planet we love,” and that includes not just the product they create, but the packaging it comes in. But when that eco-friendly packaging started to break down, the company had to choose a lesser of two wasting evils.

ReGrained works to reduce food waste by taking spent grain from beermaking that would typically be thrown out and turns it into flour. That flour is then sold to other food producers (Griffith Foods is an investor) and added into the company’s own Regrained snack bars. This leave-no-waste-behind ethos also extended to the wrapper those bars came in.

“We’ve used compostable packaging from the beginning,” Dan Kurzrock, Co-Founder and “Chief Grain Officer” at ReGrained told me by phone, “and drew a really hard line about that being a non-negotiable value for us.”

But as Kurzrock wrote in a corporate blog post last week, that compostable packaging has started failing. When the company was small, it did just-in-time production and delivered its product to retailers close by, so the compostable wrapping worked just fine. But as the company grew and started shipping product on trucks to travel long distance, they noticed the shelf life of their product degrading. Something about the heat and humidty on the trucks during transit was breaking down the moisture barrier in the compostable packaging.

“The problem that’s happened is that we’ve got products out there that are actually only 3 – 4 months into their [nine month] shelf life and are tasting stale,” said Kurzrock.

This left ReGrained in a tough spot. Switching to plastic meant creating more immediate waste, but leaving the situation as is meant their product wouldn’t last as long and would thereby be creating a different type of waste. As Kurzrock wrote in his post, it was a decision he and the company wrestled with:

We have lost a lot of sleep over the irony of the situation: in our effort to prove that waste can be designed out of the food system, we began to create waste through staling product. We were at risk in a number of areas, including the erosion of trust with our trade partners and consumers, the cost of damage control, and the maintenance of a failing status-quo. Without change course, we would have compromised our solvency and thwarted our primary mission: fighting food waste.

In the end, ReGrained decided to go with plastic packaging in order to make sure customers get the freshest product. Kurzrock hopes that they can switch back to certified compostable packaging within a year.

But as Kurzrock explained both in his blog post and to me over the phone, the issue of compostable packaging is actually quite complicated, and if we want to reduce waste in our food, there are a number of different issues that need to be addressed:

  • There are obviously technical issues with compostable materials that need to be improved.
  • Plastic costs about a third as much as compostable packaging so there is less incentive for companies to switch over.
  • Consumers need more access to composting and to voice their preference for waste-free packaging.
  • Composters don’t even like compostable wrapping because they aren’t sure which wrappers are compostable, and whether they actually add nutrients to the compost.

Thankfully, there is an increasingly loud chorus encouraging the reduction in waste throughout our food system. Whether it’s upcyclers turning food that would otherwise be tossed into new products, or marketplaces selling food near its expiration date, or even the big players like Nestlé and Pepsi experimenting with reusable containers, companies of all sizes are learning that by working together they can make doing the right thing the easy thing.

Wool, Cool! This Company Makes Food Insulation Out of Sheep’s Clothing

No matter how sustainable your produce delivery or meal kit may be, it still carries one whopping environmental cost: packaging. One company is trying to solve that using a very old material — one that you might know from your sweaters.

The Wool Packaging Company came about when CEO Angela Morris was developing a way for British cattle farmers to keep meat cool during shipment without using polystyrene (also known as the much-maligned styrofoam). She had heard that wool was a natural insulator for buildings, and decided to try it out as an insulator for food. To her surprise, during test trials the wool kept the meat cool for 48 hours — outperforming even the styrofoam.

Established in 2009, the company’s brand, Woolcool, consists of liners and padded envelopes made of wool and covered in recyclable, food-grade polyethylene. The wool interior is biodegradable and will compost in one year; the outside lining is reusable and recyclable.

Anyone who’s ever splurged on a 100 percent wool sweater will tell you that material costs a pretty penny. But Woolcool uses so-called “waste” wool — that is, wool from the belly of the sheep that’s too short to weave into textiles and is often discarded by farmers, making it cheaper to buy.

According to Josie Morris, Managing Director of WoolCool (and daughter of CEO Angela), last year alone the company sold roughly 5 million of their liners. That’s the equivalent of over 2 million sheep. In addition to the liners — two will fully line the insides of most boxes — Woolcool also makes padded envelopes and pouches that can keep food, even the frozen stuff like ice cream, chilled below 5° C (41° F) for over 24 hours.

There are other perks to using wool as insulator. It’s more breathable than polystyrene, so it can absorb condensation from the air to keep food cooler for a longer period of time. (However, it’s sealed in plastic so the wool doesn’t come in direct contact with the food). It can also be flat-packed, which means less shipping cost than premade rectangular styrofoam boxes.

Roughly 75 percent of Woolcool’s clients are in the food industry: in addition to local butchers, cheesemongers, and farmers, the company also works with some pretty major customers such as juice and smoothie company innocent, Unilever, and meal kit company gousto. They also make insulated sheets and pouches for pharmaceutical shipments. Morris didn’t disclose exact pricing details, but said they were very competitive in the insulation market.

As of now the majority of Woolcool’s customers are in the U.K. and Europe. However, Morris said that they were looking to gain traction in the U.S., though they’re conscious of the increased carbon footprint of shipping their products so far.

Their emphasis on the environment also means that Woolcool has to work harder to prove themselves. “There’s an automatic assumption that if you’re going to use something eco-friendly you’ve got to sacrifice something too: either cost or performance,” said Morris. “Actually, that’s not true.”

Woolcool has had to fight to become known as not just a sustainable insulator, but also an effective one. “In fact, sometimes you have to prove yourselves even more because you’re a natural material,” said Morris.

As a growing contingent of people order food and groceries via delivery, more companies are working on ways to reduce the shocking amount of packaging required to ship said food around the world. Also based in the U.K., Aeropowder makes insulation sheets out of surplus feathers from the poultry industry. In the U.S., NaturalBlue transforms recycled denim into insulation. Ecovative Design uses mycelium — a.k.a. mushroom roots — to created insulated packaging.

But the eco-friendly insulation space is definitely not a zero-sum game. The global sustainable packaging market is projected to reach roughly $440 billion by 2025. With food delivery and grocery e-commerce also on the rise, Woolcool and its contemporaries have the potential to seriously shear (sorry) high environmental price of food packaging.

Six Intriguing Startups Pitching at FoodBytes! London

FoodBytes! recently announced the 20 emerging startups pitching at their London future of food and agriculture event on September 13th. We’re big fans of events that give new, innovative companies a chance to show off what they’re working — in fact, the Startup Showcase is one of the most popular parts of our upcoming Smart Kitchen Summit.

Until then (the next event is October 8-9th, if you’re interested!), here are a few startups pitching at FoodBytes! London that caught our eye:

 

Mimica
This U.K. startup has developed gelatine labels that turn “bumpy” to indicate when fresh food is past its prime. Called “Mimica Touch,” the label is meant to reduce food waste and lead to large-scale behavior change for both consumers and retailers, who as of now have been constrained by overly-cautious expiration dates. When we last reported on Mimica in March, they were piloting their technology with Danish dairy giant Arla Foods and expect to take it mainstream soon.

 

TIPA
Also in the smart packaging space is TIPA. The Israeli company makes bags which look and act like regular plastic, but are fully compostable. Flexible plastic, used as packaging for everything from produce to coffee beans, is traditionally very difficult to recycle because it’s a blend of several materials. However, TIPA has developed a material that is transparent, flexible, and durable, but will break down into compost in 6 months.

 

Photo: Garcon Wines.

Garçon Wines
Sometimes companies make head-slappingly simple innovations that make you wonder why no one ever that of that before. Garçon Wines has done just that: They make full-size flat wine bottles that can fit through your letterbox, so you don’t have to wait at home for your delivery or chase it down at the local Post Office. Their bottles are also made of 100% recycled plastic (no breakage!) and made in the U.K.

 

Photo: Wikimedia

Easilys
French startup Easilys is working to optimizing back of house management for restaurants and reduce food waste. Their purchasing software helps organize ingredient suppliers, store (and calculate the cost of) each recipe, and track food waste, among other services. Altogether, the company claims their software will save restaurants 15% on food costs. Imagine if U.K. restaurant food waste startup Winnow and restaurant software company Ingest.ai had a baby — that would be Easilys.

Connecterra
This Amsterdam-based startup has created an artificial intelligence platform to help dairy farmers manage their cows. Dubbed ‘Ida,’ it learns cows’ behavioral patterns to improve animal welfare, increase dairy farm productivity, and generally make dairy farmers’ lives a lot simpler. You can actually check out a chat we had with their CEO on our food robot podcast, The Spoon: Automat.

 

Photo: Provenance

Provenance
If you’ve ever been around a millennial (or if you are one — hi!) you’ve probably heard the question: “Is it local?” Provenance and sourcing are growing trends in the food world; people are starting to care more about where their food comes from. Which is why the aptly-named U.K. company Provenance has come around at such an opportune time.

Their platform partners with suppliers to gather and verify origin stories for their products and display this information online. They’re also one of several companies experimenting with blockchain to increase supply chain transparency; FoodLogiQ, Ripe.io, and even Nestlé and Alibaba are playing with the emerging technology to tackle food fraud, track product recalls, and increase traceability.

There are plenty more startups presenting at FoodBytes!, and you can see the full lineup here.

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The Startup Showcase applications for Smart Kitchen Summit close today! Keep an eye out over the next few weeks to see which groundbreaking young companies will pitch at SKS in Seattle this October.

Microwaveable Crispy Bacon is Now Within Reach Thanks to This Heroic Packaging

Crispy bacon lovers, your day has come. (Flimsy bacon lovers, who are you and what is your problem?!)

The U.K. company Sirane has created a package that will make microwaveable bacon consistently crispy — no more sandwiching between paper towels or messy grease splatters (h/t FoodDive).

In a press release, Sirane explained that the package absorbs hot grease from the pork as it cooks, which creates the crispy results. On the surface, this is a pretty mundane invention. But Sirane says that the packaging is actually quite versatile (though still admittedly bacon-centric): it can be sold as a sealed pack with a particular brand of bacon, or people can purchase the packs themselves and add their own preferred bacon at home. They’re also planning to sell the packaging to restaurants and cafés looking to up their microwaveable bacon game.

It’s sort of ironic that a U.K.-based company came up with this innovation since, at least in my experience, Brits like their bacon on the thicker, chewier side. But nobody likes an undercooked rasher — or a messy microwave cleanup. This packaging will surely lead to a lot more bacon butties for all.

Photo: Sirane

 

NASA and the Army are Developing the Future of Food Packaging

When I was a kid, my dad, who was in the military, showed me an MRE (meal ready to eat). To my impressionable young eyes, it was like looking at food from the future. MREs have come a long way since then, and two separate projects from NASA and the Department of Defense could show us the future of food packaging tech that will one day reach store shelves.

Mars is a long ways off and last I checked, there were no bodegas to pop in at along the way. That’s why NASA is creating new ways to store food to keep it from spoiling over the course of its planned three-year mission to Mars sometime in the 2030’s. WIRED UK has a great write up of the work the space agency is doing to prepare for the journey.

Food scientists at NASA need to think of ways of preventing food from spoiling or making astronauts sick, all while ensuring the food maintains its nutritional value, caloric levels and taste. Oh, and by the way, it can’t take up too much space given the cramped quarters of a spaceship. To achieve this, NASA is experimenting with different ways of freeze drying, thermostabilizing (blasting with heat in a sterile environment), and new types of moisture and oxygen resistant packaging.

Closer to home, Food Business News wrote about how the Department of Defense has a Combat Feeding Directorate that comes up with ways for food to travel and survive in harsh conditions. Because these ruggedized meals are carried by soldiers, this food packaging must also be compact and lightweight. During a recent talk at the Future Food-Tech conference, Stephen Moody, director of the Combat Feeding Directorate, said that food for the military has to withstand high altitudes as well as extreme hot and cold temperatures. He told the audience that “our products are required to last for three years in 80 degrees Fahrenheit and six months at 100 degrees Fahrenheit.”

While these food packaging projects are limited to military and space applications right now, there’s a good chance breakthrough technology developed by these agencies will eventually wind up on our store shelves. These new types of packaging could possibly improve food safety during transportation to deliver aid to remote places, or help reduce food waste by extending shelf lives.

At the very least, perhaps we’ll get our hands on the technology that finally gave the Army shelf-stable, combat-ready pizza for MREs.