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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

plastic waste

Cove’s Biodegradable Water Bottle Inches Closer to Market (But Don’t Expect Plastic Waste to Disappear Anytime Soon)

Is the end of the plastic water bottle finally in sight?

According to a story in Bloomberg, one startup’s vision of delivering a fully biodegradable plastic alternative to the water bottle is inching closer to reality after years of development and delays.

Cove, a company that has raised $20 million since its founding in 2018, says it is close to finally shipping its bottle, a product made using fermented cooking oil. The California-based company says that oil, which is turned into a polymer called polyhydroxyalkanoates, or PHA, eventually dissolves in water or soil without leaving behind toxic waste or residue.

From Bloomberg:

“…the PHA pellets move to Cove’s 25,000-square-foot factory, where they are sent through machinery to vacuum away moisture, sift out metal, and stretch, cut and mold the material into a hollow canister fit for water. A label is then printed directly onto each bottle (“Cove’s plastic-free, renewable bottles”). The ink, made from algae, is meant to biodegrade, too. Water from a purification plant nearby is poured in. By Cove’s estimates, its bottles will disintegrate in water and soil in under five years.”

The progress towards a final, shippable product hasn’t come quickly. The company not only struggled early on with finding the right material recipe that would provide a water bottle that could withstand freezing or high temperatures and survive drop tests, but has also taken some time to optimize the production of the bottle. After initially working with outsourced manufacturers, the company brought production in-house. You can see a little of the production facility at work in the video update from the company CEO Alex Totterman below:

Progress Update - Production is Live

According to the company, the bottles will cost about $2.99 a piece initially, which tells me that these are not intended to really replace the standard water bottle anytime soon (the cost of a traditional plastic water bottle costs well below that, with the material cost of the plastic and production coming in at 25 cents or below).

Still, the bottling industry has to start somewhere, and Cove is at least building infrastructure, materials and a process to create an alternative to plastic that could eventually see its price reduced over time. This is an achievement in itself, as many others have tried to bring biodegradable water bottles to market without much success. While Coca Cola has developed what it claims is an entirely plant-based bottle, they’ve yet to commercialize the product fully. Others, like Metabolix, shut down before they could ever find significant market traction.

In the meantime, I hope we’ll see more retailers, restaurants, and consumers embrace plastic alternatives, whether aluminum-canned or paper-boxed water. Airlines like Alaska (is there a venue where more single-use plastic is used than on flights?) have started to switch to boxed water, and I don’t see why every food service venue doesn’t as well.

The Auum Dishwasher Takes Aim at Single-Use Waste By Cleaning & Disinfecting a Glass Cup in 10 Seconds

Every year, the average office worker uses 500 single-use paper coffee cups, most of which end up in landfills. Plastic cup and bottle waste is even worse.

One obvious answer to reducing or eliminating all this waste is to replace single-use beverage containers with washable, reusable cups or glasses. The problem with this is many offices don’t have a kitchen, and even in those that do, most workers are either too busy (read lazy) to load or unload a dishwasher.

Enter the auum-S, a small countertop dishwasher that washes and dries a single glass cup in 10 seconds. The machine, which uses less than one ounce of water per wash, also disinfects the glass cups using high-temperature dry steam heated to 140°c (284 °F).

You can watch how the system works in the video below:

Unlike other small form-factor countertop dishwashers, the auum-S is targeted at offices, and because the system is for the professional market, the company uses an as-a-service pricing model. The standard setup price is €150 per month for the machine and one hundred 8 ounce glasses. The glasses, designed by Swiss company Bodum, are double-walled and can be customized for the customer with logos or names printed on the glass.

According to company spokesperson Léo Calvet, auum started selling the auum-S four months ago in its home market of France and has already shipped 1500 machines. Many customers are based in Paris and include such names as L’Oréal and Yves Saint Laurent. The company, which has raised one round of funding and is looking to raise more funds this year, plans to sell the auum-S into additional European markets this year and is eyeing a US market entry in 2023.

The Auum Dishwasher Aims to Eliminate Single Use Cups at Work

Researchers Use Bacteria To Transform Plastic Into Edible Protein

In 2018, the equivalent of about 3.5 million dumpster trucks’ worth of plastic waste was produced in the U.S. alone, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The COVID-19 pandemic has compounded the problem, driving increased demand for single-use plastic packaging and personal protective equipment.

Advances in microbiology suggest that bacteria and fungi could someday help us to tackle the problem of plastic waste. A 2020 review of this science identified some microorganisms capable of degrading different plastics (like a bacteria strain—found in the stomach of a waxworm—that can break down polyethylene, the most commonly used plastic polymer).

Two U.S.-based researchers have taken the idea of biological plastic recycling a step further. Not only are they using microorganisms to break down plastics; they’ve created a bio-based process that turns plastic waste into edible protein powder.

Ting Lu and Stephen Techtmann—professors at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Michigan Technological University, respectively—collaborated on the process. The researchers are using both naturally occurring and engineered microorganisms to metabolize plastic waste and turn it into food.

This summer, Lu and Techtmann received Merck KGaA’s Future Insight Prize, which recognizes groundbreaking science and tech solutions to humanity’s greatest health, nutrition, and energy problems. The researchers were awarded €1 million for their work. According to a press release from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, they plan to use the funding to make their process entirely bio-based; to boost the nutritional profile of the resulting protein powder; and to adapt the technology to work on a wider range of plastic polymers and other non-edible waste.

“When I first started my own lab at Illinois, I wanted to work on something that’s both intellectually challenging and societally impactful. Food generation is such a topic,” said Lu in the university’s press release. “As bioengineers, we are called to use science and technology in service of humanity by improving human health and nutrition. It’s a real privilege to use my knowledge and to partner with other researchers to tackle harrowing issues.”

Lu and Techtmann’s process brings together the worlds of microorganism-based plastic recycling and food industry precision fermentation. The big question is how the resulting protein powder compares to the products on the shelf today, and whether consumers would opt for a food product derived from plastic.

How Restaurants Can Get Involved With the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act 2021

Recently, federal lawmakers introduced the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act 2021(BFFPPA 2021), which proposes sweeping changes in the U.S. in order to curb our reliance on plastics and in the process improve recycling and lower greenhouse gas emissions. 

Now restaurants are getting involved, too. In an email to The Spoon this week, Just Salad — a fast casual chain that’s also a champion for more sustainability in the restaurant biz — said it has publicly given its support to the legislation and enlisting other restaurants to do the same.

Supported by Beyond Plastics founder Judith Enck, who is also a former EPA Administrator, Just Salad has drafted a sign-on letter for members of the restaurant, food service, and food and beverage industries. The letter urges other restaurants to get involved with supporting the BFFPPA 2021. 

The BFFPPA 2021, introduced by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-CA), expands on an earlier version of the bill. It retains provisions such as mandates on minimum recycled content for some products, more extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs in the U.S., and bans on single-use plastics. Additionally, the new version includes provisions that would reduce plastic production at the source and focus more on reusables. Finally, the bill calls for better protection for communities of color, low-income communities, and indigenous communities, which are disproportionately impacted by plastic pollution.

Additionally, the BFFPPA 2021 would test more reusable programs, reduce single-use plastics, incentivize good design, lessen pollution and toxins, and strengthen environmental justice. 

Restaurants, of course, are a major contributor to our plastic problem, accounting for almost 78 percent of all disposable packaging. Meanwhile, the United States uses more than 36 billion disposable utensils per year, which is enough to wrap the globe 139 times, and globally we use hundreds of billions of plastic-lined single-use cups annually.

Just Salad, of course, is a major trailblazer when it comes to making the restaurant industry free of packaging waste (and any other form of waste). Others, including major QSRs like McDonald’s and Starbucks, have various efforts in place to curb our reliance on disposable packaging. However, at the moment, these efforts are largely siloed between individual restaurants and restaurant-related companies (e.g., DeliverZero).

“Many conscientious restaurants and food industry leaders are trying to reduce single-use waste and offer packaging that is truly recyclable and compostable,” Sandra Noonan, Just Salad Chief Sustainability Officer, told The Spoon. “But our efforts will remain fragmented until we have a national policy that makes disposable utensils available upon request only, encourages reusable bag and container systems, supports the circular economy, and improves waste management infrastructure.” 

Those restaurants and food businesses interested in showing their support can sign the letter here.

Food Tech News: New Mushroom Oat Milk, Eco Bricks and Koji Ravioli

Califia Farms adds “mushroom milk” to product portfolio

Califia Farms makes non-dairy milk, creamer, yogurt drinks, cold brew coffee, and the company announced a new milk product this week. The new product is a barista-style oat milk that is blended with Cordyceps and Lion’s Mane mushroom powders. Apparently, the mushrooms do not affect the naturally sweet flavor of oat milk, but just add the supposed health benefits of these mushrooms. One 32 oz carton retails for $5.99, and can be found on the company’s website and Whole Foods.

Photo form Mondelez Philippines’ website

Mondelez and Plastic Flamingo are creating eco-bricks from plastic packaging

Multinational food and beverage company Mondelez has partnered with Plastic Flamingo, a group that aims to keep plastic out of the ocean, in the Philippines to turn plastic packaging waste into functional bricks. Mondelez Philippines invested an undisclosed amount into this project, and plans to upcycle at least 40 metric tons of plastic packaging waste. The bricks will be used to create temporary housing in cases of natural disasters.

Prime Roots launches new koji-based ravioli products

Prime Roots produces a variety of plant-based meat alternatives and meals made from koji, a type of fungi. The company announced this week that is due to launch new ravioli products that are filled with a variety of plant-based meat and seafood alternatives. The ravioli will come in five varieties, including plant-based lobster, chicken and black truffle, bacon and butternut squash, chicken pesto and sun-dried tomato, and Italian sausage. The new products will launch on March 20th, which is National Ravioli Day, and will be available for purchase on the company’s website.

Pepsi and Diageo Will Launch Paper Bottles in 2021

Spirits company Diageo, best known for the Johnnie Walker, Guinness, and Smirnoff brands, announced this week that it’s created the world’s first plastic-free, paper-based bottle. Along with Monday’s announcement, Diageo also said it has partnered with venture management firm Pilot Lite to launch a sustainable packaging tech company called Puplex Limited.

First, the bottle. Puplex Limited designed and developed a bottle made from what the press release calls “sustainably sourced pulp” that is 100 percent free of plastic and also food safe and recyclable. The bottle will debut in 2021 with Johnnie Walker scotch whiskey.  

Scotch won’t be the only beverage available via these new bottles. Puplex Limited created a consortium of companies that includes PepsiCo and Unilever to further develop these bottles and launch their own branded versions in 2021, based on Puplex’s designs and tech.

More than 1 million plastic bottles are sold globally every single minute, and each of of those takes about 450 years to completely degrade. When it comes to recycling said bottles, the U.S., certainly wouldn’t win any prizes, unless they’re for not recycling: in 2017, just 8 percent of plastics were recycled, according to data from the EPA.

Given our broken recycling system, major beverage companies (among others) are now under pressure to reduce their overall reliance on plastic. For example, in 2019, PepsiCo teamed up with Coca-Cola and Keurig-Dr. Pepper for the Every Bottle Back program, which aims to reduce plastic use as well as invest in the improvement of the recycling of plastic bottles. 

So far, developing alt-packaging for the plastic bottles has proved challenging. It seems Diageo has made something of a breakthrough with its product announced this week. How scalable that breakthrough is across the entire beverage industry remains to be seen. 

The Rocean Smart Seltzer Maker is Shipping This Spring, After a Stay at the Swanky Conrad New York

If you’re in Vegas right now for CES, there’s a good chance you’re sitting in a hotel room sipping from a hotel-supplied bottle of water as you read this. Sadly, most of us do it, despite knowing the wastefulness of single-use plastic.

But I get it; Vegas’s dry air makes us thirsty, and, let’s face it, hotels aren’t great at providing in-room solutions for filtered water. (And also: have you ever tasted Vegas tap water?)

Here’s the thing though: more and more of us are moving through the day with our own reusable water bottles, and if we just had an in-room solution we’d fill up there before heading out to conquer our day.

Well if you’re staying at the Conrad New York this coming March, you’ll actually have the chance to fill your bottle water up with filtered (not to mention fizzy and flavored) water in-room. That’s because the swanky NYC hotel is going to put a Rocean smart water machine in every one of the hotel’s 463 rooms for a limited time.

The ritzy chain decided to give the water machines a go after a 40 day pilot this past November-December where they installed a Rocean in a single room. According to Rocean’s Chief Commercial Officer Andre Jaquet, guests in the room consumed 1.2 liters of water per day from the Rocean on average, the equivalent of 5-6 hotel-furnished single use plastic water bottles. Hotel management ran the numbers and realized, over the course of a year, they could eliminate about 1 million plastic water bottles from going into the waste stream.

One million plastic water bottles is a lot of water bottles. Extrapolate that across the tens of thousands of hotels in the US that provide single-use plastic water to guests, and you can see how big an impact these types of solutions could make if widely deployed.

Sadly, there are some business model inhibitors to making this happen, namely that lots of hotels charge guests for water bottles. But Rocean envisions a future where hotels could charge for extras like flavors and other add-ins like caffeine or nutrients that could replace the income from selling single-use plastic.

Friend of The Spoon Richard Gunther, who looked at the Rocean for the Spoon in 2018, told me what he likes most about the machine is it can be plumbed directly into your own water system. “That makes it really easy to use,” he said.

What I like most about the Rocean is the product’s aesthetics. Like many, I’m finding my kitchen countertop increasingly crowded, and if I’m going to put another device in my kitchen, it had better look good.

This one does, in no small part due to a former architect. Unlike so many of the high profile connected consumer products coming out of Silicon Valley nowadays, the product’s design wasn’t the result of some engagement with a high-priced design firm like Frog or IDEO, but instead it was the brainchild of architect-by-training and cofounder Mohini Boparai.

Boparai and husband, CEO Sunjay Guleria, conceived of the concept for the Rocean when living in India and Amsterdam and trying out different seltzer makers and filtration systems. They soon began to think about the impact a good built-in filter and carbonation system could make on reducing plastic, and soon Rocean was born.

If you aren’t traveling to New York soon to stay at the Conrad, you’ll be able to buy a Rocean smart water dispenser for your home soon. The machines, which had originally expected to ship in December of 2018, are now on track for a spring 2020 shipment after a $6 million venture infusion from investment firm Blue and a handful of celebrity angels like John Legend and South African DJ Black Coffee.

The machines will sell for $349, which will come with a starter of a couple flavors and a CO2 canister. Additional flavor add-ins and CO2 refill canisters will be available through the company’s website.

Is Grocery Shopping’s Future Bringing Your Own Containers? Pete and Gerry’s Is Finding Out.

A trip to the grocery store creates a trail of packaging, much of which is plastic, that is mostly destined for a dump, sometimes a recycling center, and sadly, too often, the ocean.

Some supermarket chains are trying to do their part to reduce waste, with the latest being Giant Eagle, which has pledged to phase out single-use plastics by 2025. However, moves like these, while noble, don’t account for the waste produced by the packaged products on store shelves, from cans of beans, pints of ice cream or cartons of eggs. That latter one is getting some attention now from Pete and Gerry’s, the organic egg company.

The company announced in a press release yesterday that it has been trialing a reusable egg carton at co-op food stores in New Hampshire and Vermont. The cartons are made of recycled, durable, BPA-free plastic that can be washed at home and reused repeatedly, according to the release. Once a consumer buys the carton for $2.99, they can fill it up from the Pete and Gerry’s display of loose eggs, which are discounted from a standard dozen. More than 500 of the cartons have been sold, Fast Company reports.

Pete and Gerry’s said that an average American who eats 279 eggs per year would save more than 1,800 cartons from entering the recycling and waste stream by using the reusable carton. On a larger scale, if every one of the 327 million American did so, more than 594 billion cartons would be out of circulation. Pete and Gerry’s said that it’s looking to bring the program to more stores.

One aspect of a reusable anything is that customers must bring it with them whenever they go shopping. At their core, these items inconvenience the customer. And introducing them requires companies to be brave enough to add some friction between them and a transaction. 

One company doing so is Blue Bottle Coffee, which announced last week that “by the end of 2020, all of our US cafes will be zero waste.” The company means it: it asks customers to bring their own reusable cups, or will charge them a deposit to use one of the cafe’s, and will sell whole bean coffee in bulk to customers with their own containers rather single-use bags.

Eventually, our standard should require the use of reusable containers. The tactic taken by many food companies is to switch to materials that are more easily recycled. Clearly, this won’t be good enough. Recycling has proven to be ineffective while the world continues to drown in plastic.

The future of food shopping should be a little more difficult for everyone, especially for those who can afford it, for the sake of the planet. “Zero-waste stores” are already attempting this, demanding that their customers bring their own containers. Larger grocery chains and consumer packaged goods companies need to step up and expand efforts such as the delivery service Loop, which utilizes reusable containers.

The planet has suffered because of our thirst for convenience. It’s time for more companies to step up and demand customers give up some of that convenience.

Startup Says its Spoons and Forks Compost in as Little as 10 Days

No offense to the humble spoon (after all, this site is named after it), but it’s not as necessary for modern American diets than its pointier sibling, the fork.

And although there’s been some innovation in terms of environmentally friendly disposable spoons in the form of Planeteers’ edible spoon, there are few options for plastic fork replacements that don’t destroy the Earth. Startup TwentyFifty aims to change that with its fork, which founder Zack Kong, a bioengineering graduate from the University of California San Diego, said is “the first compostable fork in the world that’s similar in function to plastic and wooden forks.”

The difference between TwentyFifty’s technically edible products — which currently include forks and spoons but will eventually encompass chopsticks, stirrers and straws — is its patent-pending manufacturing process that compresses wheat flour, soy flour, corn flour and water into strong utensils that can withstand higher temperatures. Essentially, TwentyFifty’s spoons won’t melt soaking in a bowl of hot soup for 30 minutes. Due to the nature of the ingredients of the utensils, the company says they will break down in a backyard compost pile in as little as 10 to 30 days, while competing compostable products need to be broken down in industrial plants.

“The other benefit of this product is not just the compostability, but it’s also an organic fertilizer,” said Albert Liu, a TwentyFifty board member and business advisor. “When these utensils compost, they add 2.7 cents worth of fertilizer to the soil. We use grains to make the utensils, then they go back into the earth to help grow more grains.”

The big hurdle for the company now is cost, with retail price per utensil around 50 cents each, wholesale at 25 cents and bulk at 15 cents. That’s hugely expensive compared to plastic, which could be as cheap as pennies per utensil. TwentyFifty anticipates prices to drop to 5 to 10 cents as it scales up and automates its production line, which will allow it to produce 10,000 to 20,000 units a day. 

TwentyFifty’s target market isn’t individual consumers, however, who could just use silverware. Rather, it’s aiming to partner with universities and municipalities. Liu said the company has a vendor agreement with UC San Diego, and has partnerships in place with Malibu, Santa Monica and San Francisco, which have all placed bans on single-use plastics. The utensils can also be found at a number of California cafes and yogurt shops.

Earlier this year, the New Food Economy found that so-called compostable bowls frequently used by Chipotle and Sweetgreen actually contained “forever chemical” PFAs, which as their name suggests, don’t break down. Meanwhile, plastic pollution continues to be a global threat. So if TwentyFifty’s utensils break down like the company claims, and more environmentally friendly alternatives become available, progress can be made toward preventing future waste.

Fancy Countertop Water Machines Are Not the Solution to the Bottled Water Crisis

Single-use plastics are a threat to the world, and a large contributor of that waste is bottled water. The segment, led by food conglomerates including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and Nestle, is a huge business, pulling in $16 billion in 2016 in the U.S.

It makes sense then that startups and other companies are now introducing alternatives to bottled water to prevent more plastics from entering landfills and oceans. These alternatives take the form of countertop water filters, and there’s no shortage of them. Coming soon to the market are Lang’s All-in-One Drinks System, the Rocean One and Mitte.

All offer similar features: they filter water, of course, but also carbonate or mineralize it. Lang and Rocean also offer flavoring packs. All the machines are smart, reminding users when to replace the filters, carbon and mineral cartridges and flavoring packs. They also come at a high price, with Lang costing about $555, Mitte coming in at $529 and Rocean $349. Amazingly, there are waitlists for all three devices (the later two were successfully crowdfunded).

While these companies’ goals are laudable — Rocean’s plan is “to remove 1 billion single-use bottles from circulation within five years” — it’s built on the faulty premise that Americans even need to buy bottled water in the first place. Essentially, buying an expensive machine to filter water so you don’t buy bottled water cures a problem that is entirely avoidable in the first place.

For most people in the U.S., tap water is generally safe to drink. If you want to be extra cautious, you can buy a relatively inexpensive filter such as ones made by Brita or Pur. There is also always the option of boiling water to kill potential microorganisms.

But perhaps the main reason to stop buying bottled water is that it’s not even safer to drink than most tap water (and it has more microplastics). This is due to the fact that in the U.S. and Europe, more rigorous standards are applied to tap water than bottled, according to a study commissioned by The World Wildlife Fund. So really, people are paying corporations to put water that’s of equal or lesser quality to tap water in a plastic bottle that will live on for hundreds of years.

So spare yourself from opening your wallet for what Fast Company has dubbed “the Juicero of water,” and pour yourself a nice glass or reusable bottle of tap water. Not only will you prevent another plastic bottle from entering a landfill or the ocean, you’ll save money too.

Burger King to Stop Giving Out Plastic Toys in U.K. Kids Meals

Many children are often more excited — at least initially — about the cheap toy in a fast food kids meal than the actual food. But those little hunks of plastic will now be a thing of the past at U.K. Burger Kings, CNN reports.

Responding to a Change.org petition from British sisters Ella and Caitlin McEwan that received more than 500,000 signatures, the company said it will stop giving out the toys, saving the planet from 320 tons of single-use plastic each year. Earlier this year, the European Union voted to ban single-use plastics by 2021, which may affect the U.K. depending on the outcome of Brexit.

It will be a while until this initiative comes to the U.S. — Burger King said it plans to get rid of non-biodegradable plastic toys in other markets by 2025.

The burger company, which recently rolled out a plant-based Whopper made with Impossible Foods across the U.S., will also place “plastic toy amnesty bins” in U.K. stores for customers to bring their old toys, whether they came from Burger King or not. Burger King has partnered with Pentatonic, a circular economy company, to melt down the toys to make useful items such as play areas and trays.

McDonald’s has also announced a sustainability initiative around plastics toys. The food giant  will launch a trial program at U.K. locations where customers can choose a piece of fruit, and eventually a book, instead of a toy. The company hopes to reduce its use of about 1,000 tons of plastic in Britain per year.

While scraping plastic toys is a win for sustainability, fast food restaurants have a long way to go on the sustainability front. After all, they still use plenty of single-use tableware, straws and cups. McDonald’s has pledged to reduce its waste by 2025, while Burger King seems to just be getting started.

Zume Inc Acquires Pivot Packaging, Launches Plant-based Alternative to Plastic Food Containers

Zume Inc announced today that it is launching a new plant-based packaging system that rivals plastic in both use and cost. The new compostable food container technology comes via the acquisition of Pivot Packaging, and Zume will open a 70,000 sq. ft. manufacturing plant in Southern California to create the packaging. This is Zume’s first acquisition and terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The fact that Zume is getting into the manufacturing of sustainable packaging isn’t a huge surprise. The company has always been on a mission to increase efficiency throughout its food production through robots, data-driven logistics, high-tech appliances, and applying its knowledge to other restaurants.

The addition of making and selling its own eco-friendly packaging extends the control over their product further down the delivery stack, provides another source of revenue, and comes at a time when there is a definite anti-plastic sentiment rising around the globe

Zume packaging works with a number of different fiber products like bagasse (sugarcane fiber), bamboo, wheat, and straw. According to Zume, Pivot’s technology allows these fibers to be molded in a way that acts like plastic, and at scale, is at a price parity with plastic (more on that in a moment). After use, the Zume Packaging is fully compostable.

This isn’t the first time Zume has gotten into the packaging game. In 2016, Zume launched its Pizza Pod, which was made with sugarcane and developed with Pivot. This new packaging is a part of Zume Source, the division of the company that deals with inputs (ingredients). The other divisions of Zume are Zume Culinary, which includes Zume Pizza, and Zume Foward, which handles all of the logistics, trucks and appliances.

Plastic packaging is a huge problem that the world is (slowly) waking up to. Various cities, states and countries around the world are banning various forms of single-use plastics like straws and grocery bags. But the problems in combating plastic are that it works, it’s cheap and it’s already manufactured at scale.

I spoke with Zume Co-Founder and CEO, Alex Garden, who said Zume Packaging alleviates those problems. First, Garden said that Zume Packaging achieves price “parity” with plastic at scale. He didn’t fully explain exactly what metrics he was using, what the actual cost of Zume Packaging is or how he was defining scale, but said customers large and small would be able to afford it.

Zume Packaging will be available to Zume customers around the world. In addition to the Southern California plant, Zume is opening up manufacturing facilities in India and China. Zume Packaging is available to Zume Culinary customers and those customers would be making announcements about their use of the product over the coming months.

One of the reasons Zume is able to make both the Pivot acquisition and aggressively ramp up the manufacturing of its new packaging is because it got a $375 million investment from Softbank towards the end of last year.

Zume isn’t alone in re-thinking traditional packaging. The Loop is a partnership among a number of different CPGs like Pepsi and Unliver to ship products in re-useable containers. And over in the UK, grocery chain Waitrose introduced compostable packaging for its ready to eat meals in May. Israeli startup TIPA has also created fully compostable, flexible, plastic-like packaging.

We’re all for any company fighting plastic waste here at The Spoon, and we are interested to see how Zume Packaging stacks up against plastic.