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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

waste reduction

Israeli Company Wants to Create a Greener Future Through Compostable Plastic

Like many transformative ideas, the genesis behind TIPA, an Israeli company with a novel way to reduce plastics in the environment, came from the need to solve an obvious problem. Daphna Nissenbaum, TIPA’s CEO, and co-founder was bothered by the mountain of plastics around her and wanted to find a solution that would benefit her son and others moving forward.

“If you think about nature’s packaging, such as an orange peel, or banana peel,” TIPA’s vice president for North America, Michael Waas, told The Spoon in a recent interview. “We don’t see the Mt. Rainier of banana peels or orange peels because they all break down. And so (Nissenbaum) thought, ‘I need to do something about this for my kids’ and turned her focus on finding a compostable solution inspired by nature.”

For TIPA, it’s all about flexible plastics—those water bottles and food packaging that may wind up at a recycling center but are challenging to become part of a circular economy where materials can be reused for another valuable purpose. Founded in 2010, TIPA’s vision for flexible packaging is to create compostable packaging with the same qualities as conventional plastic, such as durability and shelf life. In particular, for food packaging, compostable material will add days to the freshness of bagged produce and other foods.

Waas explains that TIPA uses polymers that are both bio-based and petroleum-based, which seems contrary to the company’s overall mission. “You’re probably thinking that doesn’t make any sense,” Waas said about petroleum-based polymers. “You can have fossil-based, petroleum-based polymers designed to be fully compostable and bio-based polymers that are not compostable. So, it’s two different challenges. One is the source of the material, whether it’s coming from oil or a bio-based source, and then what happens to it at the end of life. And so TPA uses a combination of both bio and fossil-based, but absolutely everything we produce is certified compostable.”

“We spend a lot of time working on what works and what doesn’t,” Waas added.

TIPA takes a broad approach to the business side of creating a viable system for the circular economy. The Israeli company can manufacture packaging for clients or provide the compostable film to clients or their packaging partners. “We focused on developing the IP and the technology around the solutions. Then, we work with best-in-class manufacturing partners to produce the film or the laminate,” Waas said. We’re doing that because it allows us flexibility for customers.”

The EPA points out that composting enriches the soil, helping retain moisture and suppress plant diseases and pests; reduces the need for chemical fertilizers; encourages the production of beneficial bacteria and fungi that break down organic matter to create humus, a rich nutrient-filled material, and reduces methane emissions from landfills and lowers your carbon footprint.

Creating a compostable future is an obvious path to a greener world, but are consumers ready to make an effort to go through the process of composting? Several surveys indicate that most consumers would compost if it were more accessible. More than 180 communities in the U.S. have composting programs, including such cities as Portland, San Francisco, Boulder, and Seattle have city-wide composting programs.

Even with the ready availability of municipal composting programs and consumers’ general sense they would use composting if made available, Waas believes that consumer education is critical.

“We work with our customers to help them communicate that the package is recyclable because we want this packaging to end up in the right facility, whether that’s in somebody’s backyard or at an industrial compost facility,” Waas said. “And that means consumers have to know that it’s compostable and put it in the right place.”

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

Chipotle Diverting More Than Half Its Waste, Says Latest Company Sustainability Report

Chipotle has diverted 51 percent of its waste, the company said in its 2020 Sustainability Report released this week. The QSR chain said it was able to do much of this through recycling, composting, and waste-to-energy programs.

This is the third annual sustainability report from Chipotle, and it tracks the company’s progress on sustainability goals over time. For example, diverting 2,071,583 cubic yards of waste — or over half of all its waste — was a company goal laid out in the 2018 Sustainability Report. 

Waste-diverting efforts have so far included transforming used plastic gloves into trash bags, and the Avocado Dye Line, which involves dying clothing with the pits of avocados. Caitlin Leibert, Head of Sustainability for Chipotle, noted in a statement that keeping that much waste out of the landfills was “an extraordinary achievement” for a company of that size. Chipotle currently operates more than 2,500 locations.

The 2020 Sustainability report aligns with the company’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) metric, which ties some executive compensation to annual targets around diversity and sustainability. Chipotle breaks these objectives into three categories: food and animals, people, and the environment.

Across those three categories, some results from the 2021 sustainability report include:

  • Purchasing over 31 million pounds of local produce – an investment of more than $23.3 million into local food systems
  • Donated more than $5 million to local community organizations through 26,000 fundraisers in its restaurants
  • Offered industry-leading, debt-free degrees in business for employees and recently expanded the program to include Culinary, Hospitality and Agriculture majors
  • Setting up and maintaining a composting program at 25 percent of its locations 
  • Reducing 62,582 kWh of energy, which the company says is the emissions equivalent of 10,000 passenger vehicles driven for one year or 5,300 homes powered for one year
  • Launching Real Foodprint, a digital tool that calculates the environmental impact of Chipotle ingredients
  • Upcycling 60,000 avocados for the Dye Line

In a forward to the report, Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol said “more work can always be done,” and along those lines, the report outlines future goals for the company. Among those are, converting more than 400 acres of conventional farmland to organic farmland, developing a Minority Supplier Development program, reducing overall waste by 5 percent by 2025, and piloting at least one initiative in 2021 that reduces plastic.

Chipotle is one of those chains that, thanks to a focus on digital prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, has not just pulled through but thrived during the last year. The brand is big enough at this point that its sustainability practices can help influence the entire restaurant industry,

Burger King Partners with Loop to Pilot Reusable Packaging

Burger King announced today that it has partnered with TerraCyle’s circular packaging service, Loop, to test out the use of resuable food and beverage containers.

Starting next year, select BKs in New York City, Portland (the announcement didn’t specify Maine or Oregon) and Tokyo, will give consumers the option of getting their sandwiches, sodas and coffee in the reusable containers and cups. Customers opting for the reusable packaging are charged an undisclosed deposit upon purchase that is refunded when the containers are returned to a collection system at the restaurant. From there the containers will be picked up by Loop, cleaned and sanitized and reused by Burger King.

If this sounds fast food news sounds familiar, that’s because McDonald’s announced a similar partnership with Loop last month to trial reusable cups in the U.K. next year.

Both of these trials are good news as fast food giants like Mickey D’s and the BK Lounge are both sources of a lot of single-use packaging waste. Their involvement in the battle against waste will be important, as my colleague, Jenn Martson recently wrote:

Whether you love big restaurant chains or fear they’ll be the only ones left after the dust from the restaurant industry upheaval settles, it’s worth acknowledging that they’re typically the ones with the deep enough pockets to invest in new forms of to-go containers.

For people who care about waste and recycling, it should be noted that Loop continues to expand its services. In addition to Burger King and McDonald’s, Loop is broadening its CPG shopping service across the U.S. and its parent company, TerraCycle, is working with Hive’s just-launched online market.

This reusable container partnership with Loop also reinforces Burger King’s sustainability commitments, which include having 100 percent of its customer packaging be sourced from renewable, recycled or certified sources by 2025, and recycling of customer packaging in 100 percent of restaurants in Canada and the U.S. by 2025.

Rise Mrkt Launches Kickstarter Campaign to Create Waste-Free Grocery Delivery

If online grocery retailer Rise Mrkt has its way, shoppers will soon be able to get their pantry staples delivered right to their door and free of packaging waste like plastic.

The startup bills itself as “a radically sustainable online grocery store, though it hasn’t actually launched yet. The NYC-based company currently has a campaign on Kickstarter to raise $25,000 for its concept, which is to ship grains, seeds, beans, and other dry goods to customers’ doorsteps in 100 percent compostable packaging. If the Kickstarter campaign is successful, Rise Mrkt will officially launch in 2020 with 50 to 100 dry pantry staples on offer. Customers will be able to buy them online via the Rise Mrkt website.

According to the company’s Kickstarter page, pouches containing the food are entirely plant based and will break down in less than 180 days in a composting facility. You will also be able to compost them in your own backyard, should you feel so inclined. And if you live somewhere with no nearby composting facility or backyard (fire escapes don’t count), Rise Mrkt will send you a prepaid label with which to ship your empty pouches to the nearest composting facility. “If you can return an Amazon package, you can compost,” company founder Jordyn Gatti told Fast Company.

Making waste reduction more convenient for customers is part of the larger mission Rise Mrkt is tackling with its forthcoming business. The online store will launch everywhere in the U.S., including Alaska and Hawaii, in order to make the concept itself more accessible. Gatti noted on the Kickstarter page that he would eventually also like to bring pop-up stores and grocery trucks into food-insecure areas.

Rise Mrkt also promises to “match or beat” the price of dry goods on Amazon or Thrive in an effort to make the concept of sustainable grocery shopping less luxury and more everyday.

If Gatti and his company can successfully pull off both campaign and business model, it would be a huge boost for plastic-free grocery shopping. Stores offering a zero-waste grocery experience are slowly becoming more known, with notable examples being The Wally Shop and Precycle, both in Brooklyn, and Denver, CO’s Zero Market. But with the concept still pretty far out of the mainstream shopper’s experience, waste-free grocery stores remain somewhat elusive and rather expensive.

That makes Rise Mrkt’s goal a fairly ambitious one, for better and for worse. Since the company will be, at least initially, limited to shipping dry goods, questions arise around scalability and reaching a wide enough customer base to keep business going. That said, it’s also raising awareness about what retailers and brands could potentially do more of when it comes to helping consumers understand and execute on waste-free grocery shopping.

The campaign runs through August 31, 2019.

StixFresh Can Double Your Avocado’s Shelf Life with a Sticker

Whenever I head to the grocery store I can’t leave without buying a bunch of bananas. But I find that a) they all get ripe at exactly the same time, and b) I can never eat them quickly enough.

Thankfully this leads to a lot of amazing banana bread, but product waste is a huge problem in this country (and in my house). In the U.S. between 30 and 40 percent of all our food ends up in the trash, with fruit and vegetables being some of the most likely to be wasted.

StixFresh is trying to curb our produce food waste problem with a sticker. Just pop one on a piece of fresh fruit and it’ll extend its shelf life by up to 14 days.

I was initially skeptical too. StixFresh’s CEO and co-founder Moody Soliman explained the technology to me over the phone. “Interestingly, the non-sticky side is the effective one,” he said. The sticker’s coating contains compounds that plants naturally make to protect themselves from predators. When said compounds vaporize, they travel far enough to “cloak” the fruit in a protective compound, inhibiting bacteria growth to prevent premature spoilage and over-ripening.

So far, StixFresh works with apples, pears, avocados, dragon fruits, kiwis, mangoes, and citrus, and Soliman said that they’re working to grow the list. They’re also trying to branch out into more vegetables and the holy grain of food waste: berries. Not only do they spoil quickly, it’s also unfeasible to put a sticker on every single blueberry. “We’re exploring alternative delivery methods,” explained Soliman.

StixFresh has a patent pending for the technology. The stickers are Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) by the FDA, which means they’re cleared to be used in food contact applications. They’re also made of paper, which means they’re better for the environment than all the plastic Chiquita banana stickers out there.

Then again, StixFresh’s end game is for their technology to end up on those branded stickers. “We’re envisioning that you’ll be able to apply our formulation to standard stickers,” said Soliman. “It will have Chiquita or Dole written on it, but it will have our [technology] in it as well.”

In addition to selling to distributors, StixFresh wants to make a consumer-facing option. Theoretically, people could pick up a pack of StixFresh stickers in the produce aisle and stick them on their avocados when they got home. “The simplicity of application allows it to be adapted at any point along the supply chain,” said Soliman.

This versatility is what sets StixFresh apart from Apeel, another produce-saving technology. Apeel creates an edible coating that farmers and distributors can apply to produce to extend shelf life. Which is super cool, but limiting; Apeel has also only been tested on avocados, asparagus, and some citrus fruits. The beauty of StixFresh is that it can be applied to a relatively wide variety of produce at any time, from harvest to home.

Of course, the downside is that you have to use stickers, which will eventually end up in a landfill. But that seems a small price to pay if it could significantly reduce the amount of food waste.

StixFresh recently launched an IndieGoGo campaign, which has exceeded its goal with 26 days left to go. The company is currently doing R&D out of a facility in Belgium and plans to send stickers to their early backers by August of this year. Soliman didn’t disclose pricing yet, saying it depended on how quickly they could scale production, but Early Bird backers on IndieGoGo can snag a pack of 50 stickers for $30.

As always when crowdfunding is involved, we have to have a healthy dose of skepticism about whether or not the product will actually make it to market. But StixFresh is a really good idea and (at least seemingly) pretty cheap to produce. Plus the company has a pending patent and some seed funding to back them up. If they do pull it off and I see their stickers in the grocery store someday, I’d definitely give them a try — even if that means less banana bread for me.

The Brooklyn Councilman Who Wants to Ban Plastic Straws Is Now Going After Cutlery

There’s a new (plastic) target on the block for Brooklyn Councilman Rafael Espinal, otherwise known as the guy who introduced a ban on plastic straws in NYC last year. Today, Espinal introduced legislation that would lead to the eventual ban of disposable plastics like restaurant takeout cutlery.

The bill wouldn’t actually ban the cutlery itself. Rather, it would require the city to “review items made with single use plastics at least annually and ban those items for which reasonable alternatives are available.” That task would fall to the NYC department of Consumer Affairs, along with the department of Sanitation and the department of Environmental Protection.

From the legislation text:

The commissioner shall on February 1, 2020, and annually thereafter, report to the mayor and the speaker of the city council on single use plastic items considered, the evaluation including economic feasibility and environmental effectiveness, and the determinations.

Only after these areas are evaluated and a suitable replacement found would the ban on the actual plastic item, cutlery or otherwise, go into effect. Which sounds nice and orderly on paper but would in reality take a long time to go into effect — years, in fact.

Still, the proposed legislation continues the conversation around what to do about the amount of single-use plastic that goes into the trash. Investor Rob Kaplan of Circulate Capital, whose work is heavily involved in the environment, put it well last year when he told National Geographic: “There’s no silver bullet to stop plastic pollution. We’re not going to be able to recycle our way out of the problem, and we’re not going to be able to reduce our way out of the problem,” adding that we have to pursue both tracks while continuing to seek other solutions to make any sort of dent.

In the world of single-use plastics, particularly those at restaurants, Espinal’s legislation is aimed at finding those other solutions. How challenging that would be remains a question mark. Nix a plastic straw and your beverages are still drinkable; nix a plastic spoon, and you’ll have to get creative about how to eat that cup of mashed potatoes from the diner.

There’s also the question of what “reasonable alternative” would actually entail. The legislation discusses “economic feasibility” and “environmental feasibility,” but doesn’t point to specific materials that could replace plastic. There are a number of plastic alternatives when it comes to things like cutlery, from wood to vegetable starch and other plant-based materials. But again, there’s the economic factors to consider, and the proposed legislation text only says economic feasibility includes “direct and avoided costs such as whether the material is capable of being collected by the department in the same truck as source separated metal, glass and plastic recyclable material, and shall include consideration of markets for recycled material.”

We saw a number of private companies rally last year by banning plastic straws, or at least kickstarting the process to ban them. If Espinal’s new legislation were to be effective, it would need to happen in tandem with another massive effort on the part of companies like Starbucks, Alaska Airlines, and others to ban single-use items like cutlery, plastic bags, and other eating items. In this to-go-obsessed culture, that could be a huge ask.

So maybe it’s time for the delivery companies themselves to get involved. Ever the skeptic, I have my doubts this would ever happen. But companies like Grubhub, Uber Eats, and DoorDash are wielding a massive influence over U.S. culture at the moment. It would be nice to think they could use that influence (and money) to show the rest of us how to creatively counter the craze for single-use plastics.

Too Good To Go Raises €6M to Rescue Food in 16 Countries

Too Good To Go, the Denmark-based company fighting food waste, recently announced that it had raised €6 million ($6.8 million) in internal funding.

I spoke with Javier Amigo Miranda, CMO of Too Good To Go (TGTG), who told me that the fundraise was powered by private investors, including Mike Lee, co-founder of fitness tracking app My Fitness Pal, with participation from TGTG’s own CEO and Chairman of the Board. Amigo Miranda told me that this latest funding brings TGTG’s total warchest to roughly €18 million ($20.4 million).

TGTG is essentially a surplus food marketplace. At the end of the day businesses can post leftover food on the TGTG app at a discount. Hungry people can use the consumer-facing side of the app to search local restaurants and grocery stores for surplus food, place an order, then swing by and pick up their discounted grub in a pre-set collection window.

TGTG currently serves 9 countries and has aspirations to expand to 16 by the end of the year. According to Amigo Miranda, the company has saved over 10 million meals from the landfill since it was founded in 2016.

Europe is becoming a hotbed surplus food rescuing companies. Winnow optimizes BOH kitchen operations to reduce food waste, and Olio facilitates free food surplus sharing among neighbors and businesses. TGTG’s biggest competitor is Karma, based across strait in Sweden, which also connects local restaurants with deal-hungry consumers looking to purchase leftover food at the end of the day.

TGTG may have a bigger reach than Karma — which is only available in the U.K. and Sweden — but the latter seems to be experimenting more widely with new marketplaces for surplus food. In August of last year Karma raised $12 million, and a few months later Karma partnered with Electrolux to install smart fridges in grocery stores filled with discounted surplus food. Hopefully TGTG will use some of its new funding to not just expand geographically, but also explore new ways to get excess food out of the landfill and onto consumers’ plates.

KFC Will Convert to Renewable Plastic Sources By 2025

KFC announced today it plans to eliminate non-reusable, plastic-based packaging from its supply chain by 2025, Nations Restaurant News reports.

To meet that pledge, the chain will work with suppliers worldwide to identify alternative plastic sources for items like lids, cutlery, straws, and plastic bags. Additionally, the chain said via press release it will conduct audits of its franchises current systems to find areas for reducing plastic waste. Though the chain hasn’t said what could potentially replace plastic, KFC franchisees will be able to create their own sustainable packing agenda, so materials could vary based on markets.

“With environmental sustainability as a core aspect of how we do business, this commitment represents a public acknowledgment of the obligation we have to address these serious issues.” KFC CEO, Tony Lowings, said in the press release.

Some KFC stores have already taken large steps in the direction of cutting down on plastics. In 2018, the company stopped offering lids and straws for drinks at 84 of its Singapore locations — though that only applies to customers eating at the restaurant. Locations in France and Romania, meanwhile, are looking to replace plastic straws with paper ones.

KFC’s pledge follows similar moves by the likes of McDonald’s and Starbucks to reduce single-use plastics. In January of 2018, McDonald’s announced its goal of having 100 percent of its restaurants use fully recyclable packaging by 2025. Also in 2018, Starbucks launched its open-source “Greener Stores” initiative, of which reducing waste is one part. Prior to that, the coffee giant had announced it would eliminate single-use plastic straws from more than 28,000 locations by 2020.

Like those chains, KFC’s reach is wide, as the company operates 22,000 restaurants in 135 countries across the globe. It’s also involved in the the NextGenCup Consortium, a partnership amongst food-service leaders to address the 250 billion cups produced annually that wind up, for the most part, in landfills. Working with partners like McDonald’s, Starbucks, The Coca-Cola Company, and KFC’s parent company, Yum Brands, the consortium fosters innovation towards finding a more sustainable cup design for quick-service restaurants.

Finding the perfect cup and then getting it into stores will be something of an uphill battle, given the dizzying inconsistencies over what can be recycled where, not just in the U.S. but worldwide. You also have to get consumers to actually recycle, which sounds like a no-brainer but will be a challenge, given that, in the U.S., 91 percent of plastic isn’t recycled.

Still, it’s nice to see mega brands signing on to make steps towards change. I expect we’ll hear more rumblings around this in the coming months, and 2020 so far looks to be the year major change starts happening when it comes to finding more sustainable ways to do quick-service food.

As Pushback against Bottled Water Grows, Four Companies Offer Flavorful Alternatives

The age of bottled water may soon come to an end — or at least plateau.

Last week the Wall Street Journal published a piece that called the future of the bottled water industry into question. The “why” is obvious: Driven by images of waste-choked ocean life, plus government and corporate initiatives to eliminate single-use plastic straw use, consumers are looking for alternatives to the most popular bottled beverage in the U.S. And the industry is already feeling it: U.S. bottled water sales are expected to grow by only 6.7 percent this year —  the smallest increase this decade.

What wasn’t so clear from the piece, however, is what commercially viable alternatives are out there. To combat the downturn in sales, bottled water companies are scrambling to create a better bottle, either by promoting plans to switch to 100 percent recycled plastic, or leveraging new materials like cardboard containers (à la cafeteria milk) and glass. But boxed water and glass bottles are expensive and delicate, and we’re years away from a 100 percent recycled plastic bottle.

While eco-conscious consumers can certainly fill up a reusable water bottle instead of buying a plastic one, that doesn’t satisfy the growing demand for flavored seltzers and “healthy” mineral waters. It’s hard to find a replacement for bottled options that give options for carbonation and flavor add-ins — but a few disrupters in the market are working on it. Here are four companies trying to shake up how you hydrate, sustainably:

Image credit: Ted Eytan under creative common license

PepsiCo’s Drinkfinity + SodaStream

Back in August PepsiCo announced plans to acquire SodaStream, makers of the popular countertop carbonation system. The initial investment in the device has a relatively high monetary and environmental cost (it is, after all, made of plastic), it pays off in the long run since you theoretically don’t won’t be buying any more single-use plastic bottles.

This move came just a few months after the beverage giant launched DrinkFinity, a system which lets you flavor your water with special pods that go into a PepsiCo reusable drink “vessel.” Chris tested them out and determined that the taste was actually pretty good — and the reusable bottle could help keep plastic out of the waste stream. Bonus: you can recycle the flavor pods by mailing them in.

Of course, PepsiCo also owns bottled water company Aquafina and recently launched Bubly, a flavored seltzer which comes in cans and bottles — both of which put a lot of single-use plastic on shelves. But with SodaStream and Drinkfinity the company is offering (more) sustainable options for bottled water lovers, even ones who like flavor and fizz with their H20.

 

Photo: rOcean.

rOcean’s sleek home device 

On the surface, rOcean’s countertop device sounds a lot like a SodaStream: both appliances flavor and carbonate water. But as Richard Gunther wrote on the Spoon a few months ago, rOcean has two advantages: it hooks up directly to your tap, and also allows consumers to fill the flavor cartridges with their own preferred flavorings (though they’re still reliant on rOcean’s proprietary water filters and CO2 cartridges).

Despite these value-adds, rOcean has yet to prove that they can deliver. The company’s first round of pre-orders is expected to ship this month, so we’ll see if rOcean can follow through on its promise to help you save time, money, and the oceans.

 

Photo: Mitte

Mitte’s mineral water appliance

Flavor and carbonation are all well and good, but what about the distinct minerality that makes bottled water taste like it came straight from a mountain stream? Mitte is breaking mineral water out of the bottle. The Berlin-based company has a countertop device which lets you distill and create your own custom mineralized water at home, using replaceable cartridges.

As with the SodaStream and rOcean, Mitte’s appliance isn’t waste-free: its device is made of plastic, and I couldn’t find details about whether or not its cartridges were recyclable. But it’s a heck of a lot better than grabbing a bottle of Fiji every day on your way to the gym. The company has also reportedly been in conversations with appliance makers like LG and Whirlpool, exploring ways to integrate their product directly into refrigerators or kitchen sinks, which could cut down on the waste and space requirements.

Mitte won the Startup Showcase at our first Smart Kitchen Summit Europe this June and raised $10.6 million in August. Early Kickstarter backers will receive their Mitte units in June 2019.

 

Bevi’s customizeable water machine

Bevi makes a smart beverage device which hooks up to a tap and dispenses purified, sparkling, and flavored H20 with varying levels of sweetness. Designed to be installed in public areas like schools, gyms, cafeterias, and offices, the company’s core mission is to reduce plastic water bottle use.

When covering Bevi’s machine earlier this year, Jenn Marston mused on a future in which Bevi (or Bevi-like) machines were everywhere from fast food joints to Starbucks to gas stations, offering consumers a near-omnipresent alternative to fridges filled with plastic bottles.

 

But will they replace plastic water bottles?

Of course, while these companies are all working to make it easy to skip out on plastic water bottles, there’s one huge hurdle they may never overcome: convenience. It may be easy, even fun, to tap a few buttons and create a custom water blend to fill up your reusable bottle — but it will never be quite as quick or easy as grabbing a bottle of Evian from your fridge or a gas station fridge. Until it is, these solutions will have a hard time getting rid of plastic water bottles for good.

3 Low-Tech Solutions That Could Impact a High-Tech Food Industry

Innovative food-related gadgets and practices don’t always have to rely on things like sensors, apps, and machine learning to have a positive impact. In fact, in some parts of the world, these “low-tech” (that is, technologically simple) solutions are often all that’s needed to prevent waste, improve farming practices, and even boost the local economy.

That is to say that low tech, while maybe not as alluring as, say, using sensors to save the bees, plays a bigger role in advancing food than one might initially think. Their simplicity is effective, and often just as interesting, or at least thought provoking, as a high-tech alternative.

Consider fermentation, specifically as a way to curb food waste. Instead of just chucking food that’s about to decay (or selling it at a discount on a digital marketplace), some countries turn to a kind of “controlled decay” through fermentation. This isn’t new. The idea of preservation through decay has been around for thousands of years. And around the world, it’s still a food preservation practice.

This post gives a pretty good rundown of some of the delicacies you can find in Vietnam that exist due to preserving food through fermentation, including rượu nếp, which many Vietnamese believe kills parasites. There’s also fish sauce — the kind you’ll find on restaurant menus anywhere in the world — as well as kimchi, Sauerkraut, and Filmjölk, to name a few. True fermentation connoisseurs, I dare you to try this.

Fermentation honestly seems like kind of a no-brainer in terms of a way for, say, restaurants to preserve food and reduce waste. It’s already a trend amongst foodies, which makes me wonder if, as more and more people make efforts to curb waste, fermentation has a chance to go from delicacy to staple.

Speaking of food spoilage: typically, the closer one gets to the Equator, the faster food decays. So it makes unfortunate sense that in Kenya, fruit and vegetable vendors are constantly losing money because their produce goes bad after only a couple days. The same is true for many places of similar latitude where refrigeration isn’t always readily available.

A company called FreshBox (not to be confused with hydroponic produce company FreshBox Farms) came up with a pretty simple solution: a solar-powered cooling unit — the “box” — that looks a bit like a walk-in fridge, but reportedly costs way less to operate. Each unit can hold 70 crates of produce. Vendors pay 70 Kenyan shillings ($.068) per crate per day.

Food waste is one of the main contributors to millions of people in Africa facing starvation. According to the Rockefeller Foundation, 50 percent of all produce is lost in the post-harvest stage of production. FreshBox may not be able to solve such a massive problem overnight, but it’s proof that serious problems don’t always require a high-tech answer. Sometimes a cold box powered with cheap solar energy will do.

Another pervasive problem the food industry faces is scarcity of arable land. An oft-quoted figure is that by 2050 we’ll have to feed 2 billion more people worldwide. But it’s also generally agreed on that farmers will have to produce more food on less land. Indoor farms that raise plants without soil are one solution, but there’s no proof yet that these “modern” farming systems will be enough.

And some haven’t given up on traditional agriculture land yet. Regenerative agriculture is a land-management strategy that restores soil fertility and resilience and, in the process, sequesters CO2 emissions to mitigate climate change. Like fermentation, practices in regenerative agriculture have been around almost since the dawn of agriculture itself. They include everything from crop rotation, low tillage, installing cover crops, planting borders for bee habitats, and composting, to name a few.

One especially interesting aspect of regenerative agriculture is the role livestock can play — a definite counterpoint to the idea that livestock production is only harming the planet. Some farmers have taken to a practice called “rotational grazing,” where livestock is strategically moved around to graze, so no one part of the land is entirely depleted.

Some farmers and ranchers are already exploring the possibilities of how this seemingly low-tech action could integrate with various high-tech components in order to mitigate the burden of livestock production while also helping the actual soil. And more software is becoming readily available when it comes to overall land management, so it will be interesting to see if it can work in tandem with these age-old farming methods.

A lot of these “low-tech” innovations are currently happening in the developing world, more as a necessity than for some “oh cool” factor. At the risk of over-simplifying the matter, it would be worthwhile for food companies in more developed nations to explore these practices in more detail. Would, for example, something like FreshBox be of use to those at farmer’s markets, or the fruit and vegetable vendors who set up on the streets here in NYC? Could restaurants make more use of fermentation instead of throwing out huge percentages of their inventory?

Doing so would obviously require a lot more effort than just casual interest or enthusiasm. Still, it would behoove us to step away from the burger-flipping robots for a sec and explore such possibilities.