Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

recycling

Olyns to Launch Recycling Solution in Safeway Locations

Recycling is a task that seems simple enough for everyone to participate in, but unfortunately, it is estimated that 79 percent of plastic waste ends up in landfills. A startup called Olyns aims to increase the convenience and incentive to recycle through its new bottle collection machine that launched today.

The Olyns machine can hold 1,000 plastic bottles, 850 aluminum cans, and 50 glass bottles. The company predicts that in a year, one machine can gather one and a half metric tons of recycled PET (Polyethylene terephthalate) plastic packaging. Using A.I. technology, the machine can sort the item by type, and then compresses it.

In the 10 states where bottle deposit laws exist, consumers will be refunded for each container deposited. The consumer must download the Olyns app and tap their phone to the NFC code, which will then pull up their account information on the machine’s screen. The refund is paid via PayPal, and the Olyns app keeps track of earnings from recycling. One consumer can contribute up to 50 items per day.

The company will employ gig workers to empty out the machine when full and drive the compressed bottles and cans to a recycling center. An Olyn app sends out an alert when this service is needed.

Earlier this year, Olyns partnered with PepsiCo to pilot its first machine in a Safeway store location, where the machine collected around 1,000 bottles per day. The plan is to place the collection machine in high-traffic, indoor locations, like grocery stores.

A plastic bottle takes up to 450 years to decompose in a landfill, so it’s no surprise that other companies are on a mission to provide solutions for recycling and single-use packaging waste. CleanRobotics came out with TrashBot, which sorts your recycling and waste through sensors and cameras. Loop aims to completely avoid all single-use packaging by offering name-brand products packaged in reusable metal and glass containers. And scientists from the University of Edinburgh discovered a novel method of converting plastic waste into vanillin, a common food flavoring.

A pilot program for Olyns bottle collection machines is launching in Milpitas and Santa Clara Safeway locations this month. Olyns will not be charging the stores for the pilot program and service, and plans on generating a majority of the income for the system through advertising on the machine’s 65-inch HD video display.

Could DS Smith’s “Greentote” Solve Grocery’s Plastic Bag Problem?

My online grocery shopping and curbside pickup with Walmart is pretty delightful except for one thing: all the plastic bags. I’m not sure if it’s corporate policy or what, but it seems like Walmart’s pick-and-pack employees give just about every item its own bag. The result is a ton of waste (and just as much guilt).

Perhaps Walmart should look into the Greentote, a new type of reusable and recyclable cardboard packaging from DS Smith. The Greentote is basically an open ended box, but, as the press announcement last week described, it is also “reusable, moisture-resistant, modular, 100% recyclable container made from renewable resources.”

The Greentote comes in two sizes, and DS Smith said it can hold more than three times the number of groceries than plastic bags. Plus, Greentotes can interlock with one another to ensure food safety during travel.

The press release didn’t say how much Greentotes cost, or whether they are strictly B2B or have a consumer sales component, but they are presumably more expensive than plastic bags. Unlike plastic bags, however, Greentotes, which are fully recyclable, won’t pile up in your home or end up in waterways. Additionally, a store opting to reuse Greentotes would also need to establish a new workflow to reincorporate returned boxes, rather than just dumping single-use bags into the world.

While cost will undoubtedly be a huge determining factor in adoption of recyclable containers like Greentote, Walmart, at least, seems to be admitting that it has a plastic bag problem. In a corporate blog post last week, Walmart announced nine winners of its “Beyond the Bag” innovation challenge and that Walmart Mexico y Centroamerica and one of its Vermont locations will go bagless (h/t Grocery Dive).

Hopefully these pilot programs prove successful, and my curbside pickup will feel a little less guilt-ridden.

Hive’s Online Market Makes Ethical and Sustainable Shopping Easy

For many people during this pandemic the notion of shopping for sustainable or ethically sourced grocery products was probably tossed in favor of old comfort foods and just making sure our shelves are stocked.

Plus, shopping for more sustainable products is certainly harder than just grabbing the big CPG brands right there on display at your local grocery store. Or, at least it was. Today a startup called Hive officially launched its online marketplace that only sells sustainable and goods that do social good. The company curates the products it sells by only stocking those that have low impact ingredients, environmentally-friendly packaging, a low-carbon footprint and a commitment to social good. Oh, and the products need to taste good, too.

But in addition to selling these types of products, Hive tells you how the company (and by extension you, for buying from them) is doing good in the world. At checkout, you get a full report on your cart that shows how your purchases made a positive impact in terms of recycling, fighting deforestation or causes donated to. As you buy more, Hive keeps track to show you the cumulative effects of your purchases (and the positive reinforcement could keep you shopping on Hive!).

Of course, there are some products on Hive that are better for the planet than others. Take for example, chips, which come in plastic bags that can’t be recycled by most curbside pickup services. In these cases, Hive has partnered with TerraCycle. So if you purchase a bag of chips, you can pay an additional $1 and Hive will send you a pre-paid envelope. Put the chip bag and any other hard-to-recycle items you purchased from Hive in the bag and send it back to the company. Once they have a critical mass, Hive sends it to TerraCycle to be turned into something else.

Hive’s launch comes at a time when many food businesses are looking at what they sell and how they sell it. Zero Grocery recently raised $3 million for its plastic-free grocery stores. And if the name TerraCyle sounds familiar, that’s because it’s powering the new Loop service that sells well-known CPG brands in re-usable containers.

Hive is also coming along during a renaissance of sorts for smaller CPG brands, many of whom feature more sustainable attributes like upcylcing and plant-based ingredients. Many are also selling direct to consumers through their own websites. By stocking all these products together on a single marketplace, Hive creates a one-stop shop for conscious consumers.

Hive’s market is open to the public and shipping nationwide. The company is using ground shipments, so orders typically take two to five days to arrive. Which will give you plenty of time to think about the good your Hive purchases are doing.

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.

Food Tech News: A Trash Robot Sorts Recycling, plus Space Mac & Cheese

You made it to the weekend! Hopefully you don’t have too much of a candy hangover from Valentine’s Day festivities. Over here at The Spoon, we’re laser focused on Customize, our food personalization summit coming up in a little less than two weeks (!) in NYC. (Wanna come? Use code SPOON15 to get 15 percent off tickets.)

But conference or no conference, cool food tech news keeps on happening. This week we’ve rounded up stories about recyclable-sorting trash bins, space mac & cheese, and a plant-based burger taste test featuring Bill Gates. Enjoy!

TrashBot automates recycling and waste sorting

It’s something most of us do every day — try to figure out whether our cup/bowl/utensil belongs should be thrown into the trash, recycling, or compost. Startup CleanRobotics is trying to automate that choice for us with its TrashBot, a metal bin that will automatically sort your garbage for you. FastCompany wrote about the company this week, which is trying to streamline the waste management process and also gather data on what we’re throwing away. To use the device, just toss in your item and the robot uses a combination of camera and sensors to determine in which internal bin — recycling, landfill, etc. — it should go.

Scientists develop mac & cheese for space travel

It looks like astronauts’ menu might now include mac & cheese. Scientists at Washington State University (WSU) announced that they have developed a way to make macaroni and cheese shelf stable for up to three years (h/t IFT). And not the boxed stuff either — this is the ready-to-eat version. The new offering, which uses thermal sterilization and a special protective film, has triple the lifespan of your typical ready-to-eat mac and cheese. WSU is currently testing the product with the Army.

Photo: Mark Rober

Bill Gates taste tests plant-based and beef burgers

This week Bill Gates appeared in a video by YouTube star Mark Rober (h/t GeekWire). In it he talked about meat alternatives and, most importantly, did a mini taste test between two offerings: one plant-based Impossible burger, and one burger from Seattle classic Dick’s burgers. Gates, who has invested in both Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, said that the plant-based burger was “quite good” and “light years away from what they used to like.”

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.

Will Liviri’s Reusable Packaging Help Retain Mail Order Meal Kit Subscribers?

When you order a meal kit online, you actually get two things: the meal itself and a huge pile of containers and packaging that you are now responsible for, and not all of it is recyclable. Dealing with all this excessive waste can give consumers pause when deciding whether or not to re-order.

To help combat this packaging problem, yesterday Otter Products debuted the Liviri container system that can be used — and re-used — to ship meal kits, groceries or other perishables ordered for delivery. The plastic container has vacuum-insulated panels to keep food cold, reusable ice packs, and moveable dividers to separate food or create different climate zones within the box.

Once a customer removes their food, they place a return label on the container to go back to a sanitization facility, where it is cleaned and sent out for another use. According to the company a Liviri Fresh box can be re-used up to 75 times.

Liviri’s website claims its box keeps perishables at properly chilled temperatures for longer than the existing, leading insulated cardboard box solutions. This extended cooling helps prevent food spoilage and, the company says, can increase customer satisfaction.

Jim Parke, CEO of Otter told Fast Company that the company’s container system costs more up front than traditional packaging, but since it’s re-usable there is a cost savings. Plus, he said that Liviri’s eco-friendly and high-performance packaging approach will help meal kit companies reduce their customer churn because consumers can feel better about their less-wasteful orders and experience less spoilage (i.e. food going bad on a front porch).

Liviri is launching at either the best or the worst time, depending on how you look at it. It’s a great time because companies across the food stack are re-examining how they package their products in response to customers’ growing concerns around waste. Veestro switched to 100 percent recyclable packaging for its plant-based meal delivery, WoolCool offers a line of wool-based packaging insulation, and Imperfect Produce started a pilot where it picks up and donates used customer boxes to food banks and charities.

But Liviri is also launching at a time when most of the growth in meal kits is coming from retail, not mail order. Packaging is just one of the issues making customers move away from mail order meal kits. There’s still having to do a lot of work to make the meal, and there is always the problem of a meal sounding good when you click to order it, and little desire to eat it a week or so later when it arrives.

That’s not to say Liviri’s move is a bad one, quite the contrary. The container system can be used for groceries and other perishables, so there is a potential market, well, at the market. And any packaging that is re-useable in the meal journey is welcome in our waste-filled world.

Food Tech News Roundup: Big Moves in Alterna-Meats and Army Pizza

Boy oh boy, what a week for news! In addition to the new product launches at the Amazon Event (hi, Alexa-powered microwave), InstantPot also came up with a blender that blends hot and cold, and a new law passed which will allow Californians to sell home-cooked meals.

But there were quite a few other food tech-y stories that caught our eye this week, from the first cell-based pork tasting to a pizza with a three-year (!) shelf life. Start off your weekend by catching up on the latest:

 

JUST Inc. debuts sustainable food accelerator to tackle Asian market
Plant-based food company JUST Inc. announced plans this week to launch Made JUST, a “first-of-its-kind approach to bring sustainable and functional tools from the plant and animal kingdoms to the world’s brightest entrepreneurs.” For their first iteration, the startup teamed up with global venture accelerator Brinc and plans to tackle the Asian market. Each chosen company will receive $500,000 HKD (~$64,000 USD), as well as mentorship opportunities, access to Asian consumers, and access to JUST’s discovery pipeline. Any goods that come out of the platform will have a “Made JUST” logo.

 

Photo: OBRC.

Oregon launches America’s first statewide refillable bottle system
The Oregon Beverage Recycling Group (OBRC) has developed a new bottle that can be refilled up to 40 times. The bottles are made chiefly out of recycled glass and have a unique barcode that distinguishes them from other, non-refillable bottles. With their statewide infrastructure for bottle collection, the OBRC can find bottles that have been thrown in the recycling and return them to breweries for refilling.

 

Photo: U.S. Army

The Army has developed a pizza M.R.E.
M.R.E.’s (or Meals Ready to Eat) are meals that are long-lasting and require no cooking, making them ideal for combat missions or extreme temperatures. Generally, they’re pretty unappetizing — but recently the U.S. Army came out with an M.R.E. (soon to be deployed) featuring a food that nobody doesn’t love: pizza. The new Sicilian-style slice has cheese, tomato sauce, and pepperoni bits, and stays good for at least 36 months. 

 

Photo: Field Roast

Danone & co. form plant-based food lobby in Canada
This week Danone, Hain Celestial, Ripple Foods, Field Roast, and other plant-based producers teamed up to form a lobbying organization called Plant-Based Foods of Canada (PBFA). PBFA’s aim is to protect the market and regulatory interests of plant-based food companies in the Great North. This comes around the same time the FDA and USDA are tackling issues of labeling for plant-based milks and cell-based meat; Canada clearly wants to make sure its alterna-meats have the right to market themselves in the ways in which they see fit.

 

Photo: New Age Meats

New Age Meats does world’s first cell-based pork taste test
This past Monday cell-based meat startup New Age Meats invited journalists to a San Francisco brewery for the world’s first taste test of cultured pork. Co-founders Brian Spears and Andra Necula teamed up with chef/butcher Matt Murphy to turn their lab-grown pork muscle and fat tissue into sausages (with a vegan casing, of course). Business Insider’s Erin Brodwin got to taste the slaughter-free sausages, and had this to say:

The flavor was smoky and savory. The texture was distinctly sausage-like. It tasted like meat. Then again, it is meat.

This test was an exciting landmark in the march to bring cell-based meat to market. There have been taste tests of cultured duck and beef, but never pork — by harnessing automation and data, Indie Bio-backed New Age Meats hopes to have their product on the market in a couple of years.

Did we miss any stories? Send us a tip!

The World is Reducing Plastic Straw Use — Will the U.S. Follow Suit?

Each year, Americans go through 380 billion single-use plastic bags. These bags can’t be recycled in your household bin; instead, you have to take them to special processing facilities, which generally means they just end up getting tossed into landfill or blowing around and getting stuck in tree branches.

Global Wildlife estimates that, if we continue using and disposing of plastic at current rates, by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish (by weight) in the ocean. In 2010 alone we generated 275 million tons of plastic waste globally, with roughly one-third of that ending up in the ocean. In fact, worldwide we only recycle 14% of all plastic waste — though some estimates put that number as low as 9%.

Governments and companies are trying to reduce these staggering stats with plastic use reduction initiatives. As of earlier this month, over 60 countries have introduced levees or bans to reduce single-use plastic consumption.

Consumers have been dutifully toting their reuseable shopping bags to the grocery store for years, but the new “cool” green initiative is saying to no plastic straws. Actor and environmental activist Adrian Grenier even launched a Twitter campaign to get people to #stopsucking.

Globally, several countries are taking big steps on this front. Last month the European Commission proposed a ban on 10 items that make up more than 70% of all litter in EU waters and beaches. Included on that list are single-use plastic items like straws, bags, and cotton buds. Scotland has promised to ban all plastic straws by 2019, the U.K. has announced similar plans, and Taiwan plans to ban all plastic cups and straws by 2030.

Foodservice companies are getting on board, too. In the U.K., major chains Wagamama’s and Pizza Express have already eliminated plastic straws from their restaurants. Coffee chain giant Costa Coffee will also remove plastic straws from its stores this year. As an alternative, most establishments are offering compostable straws made of paper or other biodegradable materials or giving customers the option to do without straws altogether. Some more upscale restaurants are also offering reusable straws made of glass or aluminum. And at Smart Kitchen Summit Europe this year, FoodPairing’s robot-created cocktails featured thick, uncooked pasta noodles as straws.

Soon these might be replaced with biodegradable options.

Stateside, we’re working on the straw issue — we’re just a little slower to the table. It all started here in Seattle, where the Lonely Whale has launched its first city campaign to support Strawless Ocean’s global campaign to eliminate 500 million plastic straws from the waste stream. Which is how many straws we use in the U.S. in one day. Starting July 1st, 10 years after the legislation was introduced, Seattle restaurants who use plastic spoons or cutlery will be fined $250.

Miami Beach, Malibu, and Edmonds, WA have adopted a simliar ban. New York recently proposed legislation to end plastic straw use by 2020, under which violators would have to pay a $100 fine.

In theory, a plastic straw ban is great. No more clogging up the oceans, no more injuring or killing sea turtles, and, thanks to biodegradable and resuable straw options, we don’t even have to give up on the pleasure of smoothie slurping. What’s not to love?

The path to adoption does have some hurdles, however. Paper straws can get soggy quickly. And biodegradable straws made of wheat or bamboo can cost 5-6 times more than straws made of regular plastic. Which means they might fly for fancier coffee shops and cafés, but it might take a while for fast food chains who are ordering millions and millions of straws per week to roll them out in huge numbers.

Though some giant restaurant chains are (at least trying to) switch over from plastic straws. In the U.K., McDonald’s started using paper drinking straws in 1,300 locations this May, and will expand the initiative to all of their locations in the U.K. and Ireland by September. According to U.S.A. Today, the fast food chain will start testing plastic straw alternatives in its U.S. stores later this year.

I have been personally guilted away from having a straw with my iced coffee several times. As have food-related retailers, producers, and distributors. Alaska Airlines halted plastic straw usage in May of this year. Bon Appétit Management, a foodservice company with 1,000 locations in museums, university campuses, and other institutions, promised to eliminate all plastic straws and stirrers by 2019.

Advocates are hoping that straws can become “gateway plastics,” leading to an anti-single use plastic revolution. Food-related companies are already starting to move away from non-recyclable plastic use. Last week investors pressured global corporations Nestlé, Unilever, PepsiCo and others to reduce their plastic packaging. In the U.S. Purple Carrot became the first meal kit service to make all of their plastic packaging home-recyclable, and startup Stasher has developed re-usable silicone bags intended for food storage or sous vide.

Until then, prepare to get some side-eyes if you opt for a plastic straw with your cold brew.

These Companies Upcycle Food Waste Into New (Not Necessarily Food) Products

Earlier this week, I read a fascinating piece by Fast Company predicting that the fashion of the future would be made from food waste. They were referencing Agraloop, a technology from Circular Systems which turns food crop waste, such as sugar cane bark, pineapple leaves, and hemp stalks, into low-cost natural fibers.

By diverting food waste from five widespread cash crops into a new production channel, Agraloop would be able to create 250M tons of natural fiber annually while reducing crop burn pollution and methane emissions. This April, Circular Systems won a $350,000 Global Change Award grant from the H&M Foundation to scale up its operations and is in the midst of developing partnerships with global brands like H&M and Levis.

I for one am very intrigued by the idea of wearing banana tree trunks and pineapple leaves. But reading up on this sustainable textile company — which turns a massive waste issue into a high-value product — got me thinking about other companies using creative methods to repurpose food waste into both edible and non-edible products.

Aeropowder turns surplus feathers, a byproduct of the poultry industry, into packaging insulators for things like meal kits. They’re a double waste-fighting whammy, since they not only upcycle poultry waste, but also reduce the amount of non-biodegradable packaging needed for cold food transport. Biobean repurposes spent coffee grains from millions of cups of joe into logs and biomass pellets to fuel fireplaces.

There are also quite a few companies turning one type of food waste into edible products. Toast Ale transforms bread waste from local bakeries — the stuff that’s left after they’ve donated all the loaves that they can to shelters and food pantries — into IPA’s and Pale Ales. Not only do they divert bread, one of the most wasted food items, from landfills, they also reduce the amount of grains needed to brew beer.

Moving the other way in the brewing supply chain, Regrained takes spent grain from the beer brewing process and turns it into protein bars. Snact turns surplus produce into fruit snacks like chewy jerky and banana bars. Misfit and Rubies in the Rubble both make use of produce that doesn’t meet supermarket’s aesthetic standards — the former in bottled juices, the latter in jams and chutneys.

Tyson Foods recently developed a protein crisp snack made out of food waste, such as chicken breast trim and post-juicing vegetable purée. The “¡Yappah!” snacks launched on IndieGoGo in May and are projected to ship in July of this year.

As we’re all (hopefully) aware by now, food waste from all points on the supply chain — post-harvest, grocery store, in the restaurant and in the home — is massive. If we’re ever going to reduce the roughly 1.3 billion tons of food we waste globally, we’ve got to tackle it from all angles: from reselling leftover food from cafés to better managing Sell-By labels to spinning hemp stalks into fabric.

P.S. If you’re interested in out-of-the-box ways to fight food waste, come talk Food Waste Solutions at our free food tech meetup later this month in Seattle.

Food Tech News Roundup: Recyclable Meal Kits, KFC Goes Vegan(ish), and a Dairy App

Time for this week’s food tech news roundup! This week on the Spoon we covered self-heating beverage cans, beer made from surplus bread, and indoor smart grow system Ava’s (one of the Smart Kitchen Summit startup showcase finalists of 2017!) seed funding. We also launched a new podcast episode discussing how machine learning can help dairy farmers.

But enough about us — here are some of the food tech news stories that caught our eye this week:

Photo: Marley Spoon

Marley Spoon files IPO in Australia
Meal kit subscription service Marley Spoon filed for an initial public offering (IPO) this week in Australia, according to TechCrunch. The company is headquartered in Berlin, but decided to list on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) because Down Under is one of its biggest markets. Marley Spoon has tried to distinguish itself from competing services like Blue Apron and Hello Fresh through its paid partnership with Martha Stewart and its launch of budget-friendly line Dinnerly. The IPO is expected to give Marley Spoon a market capitalization of $152 million — but we’ll see if it can overcome challenges others like Blue Apron faced post-IPO, and whether Marley Spoon will make the move into retail stores like Hello Fresh, Plated and Home Chef.

Photo: Purple Carrot

Purple Carrot unveils 100% curbside recyclable packaging
Marley Spoon wasn’t the only meal kit company with an announcement this week. Purple Carrot, the plant-based meal kit service, sent out a press release to tell the world about their “new 100% curbside recyclable packaging.” Meal kits may cut down on food waste, but they’re notorious for their packaging waste; even if many elements are technically recyclable they often require a good deal of effort on the consumer’s part to break them down or drive them to a facility capable of processing them. Purple Carrot promises that its new packaging will be 100% fit for at-home recycling — which could be a huge step towards mitigating plastic packaging waste.

 

Photo: Stellapps

Gates Foundation invests $14M in dairy tech app
Last week Stellapps Technologies, the India-based IoT and data analysis stack for the dairy supply chain, raised a $14 million Series B round, as reported by AgFunder News. The round was led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and IndusAge Partners. Founded in 2011, Stellapps uses sensors, machine learning, and automation to optimize the entire dairy supply chain: from production to shipping to distribution. Technology has unlocked a new era of cow and dairy management, with startups like SomaDetect and Connecterra allowing farmers to make more data-driven decisions.

 

Pixabay

KFC to test vegetarian fried “chicken” in U.K.
KFC UK has made promises to cut their calorie content by 20 percent over the next 7 years, and one of the ways they’re working towards this goal is by developing a vegetarian version of their iconic fried chicken. Apparently, the new menu offering will still use the secret blend of 11 herbs and spices that made the Colonel famous, and will debut some time in 2019. This comes on the heels of the plant-based Impossible burger’s launch at White Castle.

 

Photo: Beyond Meat

Beyond Meat doubles production to meet increased demand
This week, plant-based protein company Beyond Meat announced that it would double their production to sate the growing hunger for their plant-based burgers. According to Plant Based News, Beyond burgers are outselling beef burgers in some stores in California, and Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown has said that the company is ahead of their sales targets. All of which means that the demand for meat-like vegan burgers is there, and is growing — the question now becomes if Beyond Meat can keep up with demand, especially as it rolls out in 50 countries this summer.

Did we miss anything? Tweet us @TheSpoonTech!

BioBean Uses Coffee Grounds to Fuel Your Fire — Literally

Strong coffee is sometimes referred to as “rocket fuel,” but London-based startup Biobean uses spent coffee grounds to make a much more literal type of fuel: the kind that powers stoves, fires, and even industrial furnaces.

Biobean was started in 2013 by Arthur Kay, an architecture student who realized that even when a coffee shop is sustainably designed, it still generates huge volumes of waste in the form of coffee grounds. But because they’re usually still hot when they hit the trash and add weight quickly, baristas typically empty coffee grounds into a separate container. That, as Kay noticed, makes it easy to collect out of the waste stream for reuse. 

Biobean works with waste management companies throughout the UK to collect used coffee grounds from over 1,500 small coffee shops, chains, and office blocks. After collection, drivers deliver the coffee grounds to Cambridgeshire, where Biobean has established the world’s first coffee-recycling factory. After cleaning and drying the coffee grounds (which are about 60 percent moisture when they come in, Henderson said), workers mix them with sawdust, compact them, and coat them with wax to create 100 percent carbon-neutral biofuel.

The fuel comes in two formats: the first are logs (or briquettes), about the size of a soda can, are a consumer product meant for fireplaces, stoves, or furnaces (kind of like Duraflame logs but with coffee grounds). They’re available for purchase pretty widely throughout the UK: via Amazon, through grocery e-commerce retailer Ocado, and also available in various garden centers. They cost roughly £6.99 ($9.50) for a bag of 16.

The other product is a biomass pellet, which is intended for B2B sales. These pellets are used on an industrial level to heat buildings.

Biobean’s pellets and coffee logs.

According to their website, Biobean’s coffee fuel burns 20 percent hotter longer than wood (at least according to tests they’ve run themselves) because of coffee’s natural oils. And no, it doesn’t smell like coffee when you burn it — which is actually kind of a bummer, in my coffee-loving opinion.

Biobean is exploring other ways they can make use of coffee grounds beyond biofuel. They have a team of research scientists working to transform oils from the grounds into a commercial-grade product that could be used in cosmetics or foodservice. (It’s still in the R&D stages.) Last November Biobean also partnered with Shell to develop a diesel fuel made in part with coffee grounds.

In 2016 the company first began producing their briquettes, and today their roughly 30-person team is working to expand production of their coffee ground fuel and figure out new ways to use those ground-up beans. 

Biobean isn’t the only company trying to reduce coffee-related waste. In fact, Biobean isn’t even the only company repurposing spent coffee grounds — I’ve seen companies repurpose grounds as body scrubs or turn them into compost — but they’re doing on a much larger scale. In 2017, they converted the waste from 28 million cups of coffee into biofuel. Which puts the amount of coffee grounds destined for a landfill in perspective. 

By taking such a huge waste product and turning it into something that displaces — at least a little bit — environmentally unfriendly fuel sources like coal, Biobean’s concept is a slam dunk. I for one hope they make it to the U.S. so that my future lattés can find a second life as a biofuel heating someone’s home.