Welcome to iGrow News, Your Source for the World of Indoor Vertical Farming
Re-Nuble And KETOS Partner To Provide Turnkey On-Site Food Waste Recovery Solution For Soilless Farms
Re-Nuble’s on-site food waste recovery system helps soilless farms optimize their operations while reducing costs
By 24-7 Press Release
June 17, 2021
NEW YORK, NY, June 17, 2021 /24-7PressRelease/ — Re-Nuble has announced a new strategic partnership with water innovator KETOS today, providing soilless farms across the United States with a turnkey on-site food waste recovery solution. By combining the technology of Re-Nuble’s on-site food waste recovery system with the KETOS SHIELD, soilless farms will not only be able to produce their own free supplementary and sterile biostimulants and potable water for reuse, but they will also gain access to industry-standard lab data on the quality of their treated water.
Re-Nuble’s on-site food waste recovery system helps soilless farms optimize their operations while reducing costs. Through its Organic Cycling Science™ approach, farms can finally use a fully integrated, closed-loop, and self-sustaining nutrient system, capable of reducing input and disposal costs, while delivering biostimulants capable of improving crop yield and nutritional value. However, as water droughts and erratic weather patterns become more frequent, the need for resource efficiency using circular economy strategies, particularly water reuse, is becoming increasingly necessary.
“We’re here to help our clients be proactive about water reuse in order to create a fully circular food production and hedge their risks. For that reason, we saw an immense value add for our clients by partnering with KETOS,” commented Tinia Pina, Founder, and CEO of Re-Nuble.
The KETOS SHIELD is part of a fully integrated solution offering valuable water insights including automated reporting, real-time alerts, EPA-compliant or custom threshold-based diagnostics, custom reports, historical trends, and more. These insights are used for water quality, safety assurance testing, protecting liability, understanding process optimization, improving crop yields and water data for farming and protecting consumer health.
“We are pleased to partner with Re-Nuble, as water quality and conservation is critical for agricultural applications – particularly in instances where nutrient management, water availability, water quality and consistency, or product safety is essential,” said Meena Sankaran, Founder and CEO of KETOS. “For many farmers, poor nutrient management, a lack of water, low water quality, inconsistent or varied water sources, and safety concerns can have a significant impact on both revenue and profitability.”
Re-Nuble noticed this was a salient challenge for all farms but more prevalent amongst the growing indoor, controlled environment agriculture market due to the frequent wastewater discharges not reclaimed. However, the solution is also of interest to soil-based farms as more municipalities seek to limit nutrient runoff and water contamination, impacting underground water tables.
Today’s announcement builds on Re-Nuble’s mission to help global agricultural communities reimagine localized food waste for more sustainable growing practices.
ABOUT RE-NUBLE
Re-Nuble is an MWBE-certified agricultural technology company that uses organic cycling science™ technology to transform unrecoverable vegetative food byproducts into a platform of sustainable technologies for soilless farming. Our closed-loop process transforms unrecoverable food byproducts into organic goods while eliminating landfill waste and greenhouse gasses. We were founded with the mission to help global agricultural communities reimagine localized food waste for more sustainable, environmentally-friendly growing practices.
For more information, please visit www.re-nuble.com.
ABOUT KETOS
KETOS delivers smarter, safer, and more sustainable water solutions to change the way the world thinks about water. This is done through a comprehensive offering of industrial-grade patented hardware, an IoT communication framework, and a robust software platform to address global water management issues. Real-time monitoring and understanding of water, both quantitatively and qualitatively, helps address both water efficiency (leak-detection & usage) and water quality (safety), ultimately increasing water availability. With the power of actionable and predictive water intelligence on a global scale, KETOS seeks to solve a number of the world’s water challenges with the goal of preserving this quintessential resource for generations to come. Learn more at http://www.ketos.co.
Press release service and press release distribution provided by http://www.24-7pressrelease.com
Nature Fresh Farms Introduces New Program For Their Imperfect Produce
The Waste Me Nots program was recently created to leverage Nature Fresh Farms Tomatoes, Peppers, and Cucumbers that do not meet the criteria of their Quality Control team
Leamington, ON (April 13, 2021)
A recent loss-conscious program focuses on selling Nature Fresh Farms imperfect produce to reduce food waste.
The Waste Me Nots program was recently created to leverage Nature Fresh Farms Tomatoes, Peppers, and Cucumbers that do not meet the criteria of their Quality Control team. As most greenhouses hope to grow flawless quality produce, some product grows to be naturally bent or smaller in size. Although unique in shape and size, these vegetables still have the same nutritional value and flavor as their perfect counterparts. Nature Fresh Farms wants to put these pieces of produce in the spotlight, creating more of an opportunity to fight waste and give shoppers further access to nutritious foods.
‘We believe it’s important to ensure that nutritious and delicious produce does not go to waste,” shared Ray Wowryk, Director of Business Development. “By creating this program, we are helping our retailers with a ready-made waste reduction alternative.”
Since volume of this type of product is not predictable, the program cannot be guaranteed to supply specific quantities and will depend on the product grown. However, Nature Fresh Farm feels that the unpredictability is outweighed by the fact that their quality and freshness is worth rescuing and sharing with consumers, making the most of all their product grown.
“Sustainability is at the center of everything we do at Nature Fresh Farms. Not only does this encompass our packaging and growing processes but also that the food we grow gets utilized completely,” explained the Director of Sales, Matt Quiring. “The Waste Me Nots program helps us to reduce waste while allowing us to better service the price-focused shoppers looking for quality tasting products at a discounted price and let our retail partners bring in some incremental sales to the category.”
Nature Fresh Farms wants to bring more cost-effective options to its consumers and bring the focus back to the taste and freshness of the produce, not solely the look of it. They hope to break the cycle of imperfect food waste by offering discounted misshapen vegetables that there would normally not be a market for and expand the consumer’s knowledge of the type of produce they purchase.
-30-
About Nature Fresh Farms
Continuously expanding, Nature Fresh Farms has become one of the largest independent, vertically integrated greenhouse vegetable farms in North America. As a year-round grower with farms in Leamington, ON, Delta, OH, and Mexico, Nature Fresh Farms prides itself on consistently delivering exceptional flavor and quality to key retailers throughout North America, while continuing to innovate and introduce more viable and sustainable growing and packaging solutions.
SOURCE:
Nature Fresh Farms | info@naturefresh.ca T: 519 326 1111 | www.naturefresh.ca
Vertical Farming: A Solution To Waste And Inefficiency In The Food Supply Chain?
The global food supply chain is in trouble. The coronavirus pandemic is only the latest crisis to highlight the inefficiencies and spotty reliability of the traditional model for getting food from farm to consumer
April 12, 2021
Robert J. Bowman, SupplyChainBrain
The global food supply chain is in trouble. The coronavirus pandemic is only the latest crisis to highlight the inefficiencies and spotty reliability of the traditional model for getting food from farm to consumer. Repeated instances of contamination reveal inadequacies in quality control and the tracking of product throughout the supply chain. And environmental concerns are raising serious questions about the impact of large-scale farming on the land, water, and air.
There’s a clear need for alternative methods of food production. One is vertical farming, a system of growing crops in stacked layers, spaced 24 to 36 inches apart, usually in greenhouse environments. Vertical farms can be constructed within any type of confined space, including dedicated buildings, shipping containers and even abandoned mineshafts. The equivalent of 60 acres of produce can be squeezed into a single greenhouse, with layers stacked six levels or more high.
Further advantages of vertical farming include complete protection from weather and crop pests, without the need for pesticides or other chemicals, and drastic reductions in water use. A pound of lettuce that requires 41 gallons of water with conventional farming needs just two gallons with vertical farming — in all, up to 99% less water than field-grown produce.
One such system is in operation outside Boston, Massachusetts by Crop One, which markets its products under the FreshBox Farms brand. In business for eight years, Crop One claims to be the oldest vertical farmer in North America, in terms of continuous commercial production.
Crop One grows a wide variety of leafy produce, including lettuce, arugula, basil, and spinach. From its location in Millis, Massachusetts, it supplies sellers within a radius of approximately 100 miles, with a presence in more than 35 grocery stores in the Northeast, according to chief executive officer Craig Ratajcyzk.
The location was chosen to cut down on the large volumes of produce that are typically shipped into the Boston area from California, Arizona, Texas, and South and Central America. “Those are really long supply chains,” Ratajcyzk says. “Right now, we’re within an hour’s drive of all the markets we serve.” Crop One also sources its seed stock locally, he adds, although he acknowledges the need to diversify supply in order to reduce the risk of supply-chain disruptions.
Indoor farming allows Crop One to grow to produce all year round, Ratajcyzk says. Currently, its output stands at around three tons a day, serving 10 customers in the Boston area and an overseas account that in turn sells to some 20 retailers.
The company has big ambitions to expand its production and marketing reach, and Ratajcyzk sees no problem in scaling up. Currently, he says, “the whole CEA [controlled environmental agriculture] industry represents a small fraction of the global demand market.” But recent storms and cold weather in large portions of the U.S. have highlighted the need for a method of farming that isn’t susceptible to the whims of Mother Nature.
“The industry is growing substantially,” Ratajcyzk declares, with producers increasingly being drawn to a method of farming that dramatically boosts crop yield within a limited space.
The technology can even extend to fruit-bearing trees. “A traditional orange tree maybe 15 or 20 feet,” Ratajcyzk says. “Why not a 10-foot tree producing twice as many oranges?”
The chief downside of vertical farming at the moment is one of cost. The price of an initial building containing the equivalent of a 60-hectare farm has been estimated at $100 million. Expenses include heavy energy consumption for supplemental lighting, temperature and humidity controls, fertilizer, and maintenance of proper carbon dioxide levels.
A Cornell University study from 2014 called vertical farms “pie in the sky,” estimating that a single loaf of bread containing wheat grown in a vertical farm would cost $27. Current economics would therefore appear to limit vertical farming to high-end products, although producers are banking that costs will plummet as the technology catches on. The net environmental advantages should also serve to boost its popularity in the coming years.
Vertical farming is “small, but growing every day,” says Ratajcyzk. “It’s a difficult model to establish, but if you’ve been around for five years-plus, then you have a higher probability of success.” He’s hoping for federal, state, and local support of the fledgling technique.
“I can’t really think of a downside to this industry,” he says.
Lead photo: Photo: Bloomberg
The Wonderful Co. Offers $1 Million For Pomegranate Waste Solution
Dubbed the Wonderful Innovation Challenge, the program offers up to $1 million in funding and development resources for environmentally friendly solutions to the rind, pith, and seeds left from the juicing process
The process to make Pom Wonderful juices generated 50,000 tons of pomegranate rinds, pith, and seeds each year.
By CHRIS KOGER September 28, 2020
The Wonderful Co., Los Angeles, is offering up to $1 million for a solution to the 50,000 tons of pomegranate husks generated each year for the production of Pom Wonderful juice.
ReFED, a nonprofit working to end food loss and waste, is an advisor and managing partner for the challenge, according to a news release.
Dubbed the Wonderful Innovation Challenge, the program offers up to $1 million in funding and development resources for environmentally friendly solutions to the rind, pith, and seeds left from the juicing process.
“The Wonderful Innovation Challenge was born out of our mission to continually push the boundaries of sustainability by embracing bold, innovative ideas,” Steve Swartz, vice president of strategy at The Wonderful Co., said in the release. “This competition will provide a select group of winners the resources they need to grow their business, make a positive impact, and help us fulfill our environmental mission.”
Registration is open through Dec. 7 to apply for the program, which has four review stages:
Submission of a short application with a proposal;
Qualified applicants will submit a detailed plan;
Semi-finalists will participate in a virtual interview; and
Finalists will pitch their solutions virtually to judges.
The finalist will compete for the $1 million award pool and request the amount needed for their proposal, according to the news release.
The competition will generate ideas for the company to help it solve other sustainability issues, according to the release.
“Innovation can play a critical role in driving efficiency and value, as well as in addressing environmental challenges,” Alexandria Coari, director of capital and innovation at ReFED, said in the release. “The Wonderful Innovation Challenge is a call for inventive solutions that can create value from this byproduct.”
The Wonderful Co. has invested more than $1 billion in environmental sustainability and climate change projects, including $400 million in water-efficient irrigation, cutting energy use, and $60 million in solar energy projects.
A year ago, The Wonderful Co. owners Stewart and Lynda Resnick pledged $750 million to Caltech to support its environmental sustainability research
Related news:
The Wonderful Co. owners pledge $750 million for sustainability
A Message From Our Partner, Manhattan Waste Solid Advisory Board (MSWAB)
TICKETS ARE RUNNING OUT!
You are cordially invited to a free event “Is NYC Ready for the Green New Deal” on June 20 at 6 PM. Abrons Art Center, 466 Grand Street.
Hear a diverse panel of experts discuss the implications for the Green New Deal on zero waste.
Online registration is required. No tickets at the door.
Register at the following link ASAP as we are close to selling out.
Follow our social media pages for updates. See you there!
Learn more.
This Urban Pop-Up Farm is Powered by Coffee Grounds
Melbourne roaster Cirrus Fine Coffee grows vegetables and herbs in a tiny garden, thanks to the help of coffee waste.
By Audrey Bourget
17 JAN 2019 - 1:20 PM UPDATED 17 JAN 2019 - 1:56 PM
The pop-up farm on Cirrus Fine Coffee’s parking lot is a little green oasis in the industrial area of Port Melbourne.
“We have heritage varieties of tomatoes, corn, zucchini, pumpkin, spring onion, beetroot, rainbow chard, spinach, silverbeet, flowers to attract beneficial insects and also a range of herbs like chives, basil, oregano and coriander,” says Brendan Condon. And all of this only takes up two parking spaces.
Condon is the director of sister companies Cirrus Fine Coffee, Biofilta and Australian Ecosystems, which have collaborated to develop super-efficient compact pop-up farms. “We often think that we have overcrowded cities, but if you look at them from the lens of urban farming, we have huge amounts of space. We can flip cities into becoming super-efficient food growers,” he says.
These beans deliver more than a caffeine hit.
From landfill to compost
Each year, caffeine-loving Aussies produce around 75 000 tonnes of coffee waste, most of it ending up in landfill where it contributes to the production of methane, a greenhouse gas. But coffee grounds don’t have to end up there; they can be composted and used to produce food.
Cirrus Fine Coffee’s own pop-up garden uses a mix of composted coffee grounds (rich in minerals and nitrogen), husks from the roastery (a good source of carbon), food scraps and a small amount of manure, to help produce around 300 kilos of food per year. With the World Health Organisation recommending adults consume a minimum of 146 kilos of fresh fruits and veggies per year, it means that one of these pop-up farms could provide enough for two people for a whole year.
The Biofilta wicking (self-watering) garden beds are easy to install and low maintenance. The design holds enough liquid to water the garden for a week in summer and a month in winter.
“We want people to take advantage of the abundant resources for urban farming and to engage with it, so we improve nutrition and health, and divert waste from landfill,” says Condon.
Cirrus Fine Coffee is committed to sustainability in more ways than one. Its coffee beans are ethically sourced, the brand's packaging is biodegradable and its offices run on clean energy.
It's also partnered with Reground, an organisation that goes to cafes to pick up coffee grounds and transport them to community gardens and pop-up farms.
“We all need to work together,” says Ninna K. Larsen, founder of Reground. “We work at changing the system rather than just collecting coffee. Coffee is just a great conversation starter. It’s about getting people talking about what organic waste can do, instead of going to landfill. We can grow food with it.”
Condon would like to see cafes and people around Australia embrace urban farming. “If you have a cafe where you recycle coffee grounds to grow food, people will want to go there and support that business,” he says. “Hopefully, in a few years, it will be common practice.”
Cockroaches Are Becoming Big Business In China
Cockroaches are being used to get rid of food scraps and to feed pigs.
Thomas Suen and Ryan Woo Reuters - Text
(Reuters) - In the near pitch-dark, you can hear them before you see them - millions of cockroaches scuttling and fluttering across stacks of wooden boards as they devour food scraps by the tonne in a novel form of urban waste disposal.
The air is warm and humid - just as cockroaches like it - to ensure the colonies keep their health and voracious appetites.
Expanding Chinese cities are generating more food waste than they can accommodate in landfills, and cockroaches could be a way to get rid of hills of food scraps, providing nutritious food for livestock when the bugs eventually die and, some say, cures for stomach illness and beauty treatments.
On the outskirts of Jinan, capital of eastern Shandong province, a billion cockroaches are being fed with 50 tonnes of kitchen waste a day - the equivalent in weight to seven adult elephants.
The waste arrives before daybreak at the plant run by Shandong Qiaobin Agricultural Technology Co, where it is fed through pipes to cockroaches in their cells.
Shandong Qiaobin plans to set up three more such plants next year, aiming to process a third of the kitchen waste produced by Jinan, home to about seven million people.
A nationwide ban on using food waste as pig feed due to African swine fever outbreaks is also spurring the growth of the cockroach industry.
“Cockroaches are a bio-technological pathway for the converting and processing of kitchen waste,” said Liu Yusheng, president of Shandong Insect Industry Association.
Cockroaches are also a good source of protein for pigs and other livestock.
“It’s like turning trash into resources,” said Shandong Qiaobin chairwoman Li Hongyi. “ESSENCE OF COCKROACH”
In a remote village in Sichuan, Li Bingcai, 47, has similar ideas. Li, formerly a mobile phone vendor, has invested a million yuan ($146,300) in cockroaches, which he sells to pig farms and fisheries as feed and to drug companies as medicinal ingredients.
His farm now has 3.4 million cockroaches.
“People think it’s strange that I do this kind of business,” Li said. “It has great economic value, and my goal is to lead other villagers to prosperity if they follow my lead.”
His village has two farms. Li’s goal is to create 20.
Elsewhere in Sichuan, a company called Gooddoctor is rearing six billion cockroaches.
“The essence of cockroach is good for curing oral and peptic ulcers, skin wounds and even stomach cancer,” said Wen Jianguo, manager of Gooddoctor’s cockroach facility.
Researchers are also looking into using cockroach extract in beauty masks, diet pills and even hair-loss treatments.
At Gooddoctor, when cockroaches reach the end of their lifespan of about six months, they are blasted by steam, washed and dried, before being sent to a huge nutrient extraction tank.
Asked about the chance of the cockroaches escaping, Wen said that would be worthy of a disaster movie but that he has taken precautions.
“We have a moat filled with water and fish,” he said. “If the cockroaches escape, they will fall into the moat and the fish will eat them all.”
Starbucks Offers “Grounds For Your Garden” From Local United Kingdom Stores
Starbucks Offers “Grounds For Your Garden” From Local Stores
Posted on 24 May 2018 by Ben Wood
Starbucks has joined forces with The Allotments & Gardens Council UK to offer green-fingered gardeners the chance to pick up coffee grounds from their local store to use on their plants, as the grounds can help boost plant growth.
The “Grounds For Your Garden” scheme sees Starbucks stores across the UK donating bags of used coffee to customers, encouraging gardeners to use coffee waste as a natural fertilizer and help boost crop growth, in collaboration with The Allotments & Gardens Council UK, which is helping promote the idea to its members.
According to the Allotments & Gardens Council UK, coffee grounds provide a great long-term way to enrich the soil and eliminate the need for other fertilizers, and they can also speed up the composting process – making them the perfect natural material to use in private gardens, allotments, and outdoor spaces.
The “Grounds For Your Garden” scheme is seen as an ideal way to reuse waste, as even the packaging is reused; baristas scoop used coffee grounds into the empty bags originally used to deliver espresso beans to stores. All customers need to do to get involved in the scheme is to pick up a free bag of used coffee grounds, which will be located by the check out in their local Starbucks store, or they can ask their barista.
Jeff Bond, a board member for The Allotments and Gardens and Council UK, commented: “Our members are always looking for new ways to boost their crop growth and this scheme really benefits gardeners in local communities who may not have access to this natural fertilizer. Used coffee grounds are high in nitrogen so they are fantastic for plant growth and we can use them for growing a range of plants on the allotments from, tomatoes to marrows and even pumpkins!”
Clare Walker, communications director for Starbucks UK, said: “Thank you to the Allotments and Gardens Council UK for shining a spotlight on this programme, which we have offered in our stores for 20 years. We’re committed to reducing waste from our stores, and it’s a great opportunity to support local gardeners and allotment keepers too!”
French Food Waste Law Changing How Grocery Stores Approach Excess Food
French Food Waste Law Changing How Grocery Stores Approach Excess Food
February 24, 2018
Heard on All Things Considered
Ahmed "Doudou" Djerbrani, in the orange vest, delivers the food French supermarkets must donate to food banks by law.
Eleanor Beardsley/NPR
Every morning at a supermarket called Auchan in central Paris, Magdalena Dos Santos has a rendezvous with Ahmed "Doudou" Djerbrani, a driver from the French food bank.
Dos Santos, who runs the deli section of the store, is in charge of supervising the store's food donations. She sets aside prepared dishes that are nearing their expiration date.
Opening a giant fridge, Dos Santos shows what else the store is giving away – yogurt, pizza, fresh fruits and vegetables, and cheese.
But giving leftover food to charity is no longer just an act of goodwill. It's a requirement under a 2016 law that bans grocery stores from throwing away edible food.
Djerbrani checks food donations from a French grocery store before driving it across town to a church, which will distribute it to poor families.
Eleanor Beardsley/NPR
Stores can be fined $4,500 for each infraction.
Food waste is a global problem. In developing countries, food spoils at the production stage. Well-off nations throw it away at the consumption stage. Grocery stores are responsible for a lot of that waste. France is trying to change that with its 2-year-old law.
Out back on the store's loading dock, Djerbrani plunges a thermometer into a yogurt. "I take the temperature of dairy products to make sure they've been kept refrigerated," he says.
Djerbrani loads the food into his van and drives it across town to a church, which will distribute it to poor families.
Gillaine Demeules is a volunteer with the St. Vincent de Paul charity. She's getting ready for the weekly food handout.
"Tomorrow, we'll give people soup, sardines, pasta and whatever fresh items they deliver us today," she says. "We never know what they're gonna bring."
Across France, 5,000 charities depend on the food bank network, which now gets nearly half of its donations from grocery stores, according to Jacques Bailet, head of the French network of food banks known as Banques Alimentaires. The new law has increased the quantity and quality of donations. There are more fresh foods and products available further from their expiration date.
He says the law also helps cut back on food waste by getting rid of certain constraining contracts between supermarkets and food manufacturers.
"There was one food manufacturer that was not authorized to donate the sandwiches it made for a particular supermarket brand. But now, we get 30,000 sandwiches a month from them — sandwiches that used to be thrown away," Bailet says.
While the world wastes about one-third of the food it produces, and France wastes as much as 66 pounds per person per year, Americans waste some 200 billion pounds of food a year. That is enough to fill up the 90,000-seat Rose Bowl stadium every day, says Jonathan Bloom, the author of American Wasteland, about food waste in the United States. He says there are different ways of cutting back on food waste. For example, you can start from the end of the chain by banning food in landfills.
THE SALT
Anthony Bourdain Urges Americans To 'Value The Things We Eat'
Bloom says the French law is great, and he would love to see such a policy shift in Washington. But it strikes him as difficult, politically, especially in today's climate. He knows Americans will be less excited about the government telling businesses what to do.
"The French version is quite socialist, but I would say in a great way because you're providing a way where they [supermarkets] have to do the beneficial things not only for the environment but from an ethical standpoint of getting healthy food to those who need it and minimizing some of the harmful greenhouse gas emissions that come when food ends up in a landfill," he says.
The French law seems to have encouraged the development of a whole ecosystem of businesses that are helping grocery stores better manage their stocks and reduce food waste, although a formal review is still in the works.
Parliamentarian Guillaume Garot wrote the law. He believes the fight against food waste should be as important as other national causes, like wearing seatbelts. Garot says he has been contacted by people from all over the world who want to do the same thing.
"It's changed the supermarkets' practices," he says. "They're more attentive to their environment, and they give more."
But most important, says Garot, is that a supermarket is now seen as more than just a profit center. It's a place where there has to be humanity.
Italy Among virtuous Nations Against Food Waste
Italy Among virtuous Nations Against Food Waste
How much food do we waste every year? The BCFN foundation invites us to reflect, on the occasion of the Italian National Day Against Food Waste, held on February 5, every year.
Across the world, food waste costs 750 billion euros per year, that is almost twice the Italian GDP for 2017. This figure is even scarier if we translate it into kilograms. Focusing on Italy, we discover that household waste "weighs" 145kg per person each year, which is equivalent to 1,000 small apples (100g each) or 1,500 pasta dishes (circa 100g ) or just under 750 tinned beans (200g tins), much more than the average consumption of a 3-member household. But waste does not just come from households.
In Italy, the fruits and vegetables binned by retailers waste over 73 million cubic meters of water (used to produce them), that is 36.5 billion 2-liter bottles. According to the Food Sustainability Index, the research developed by The Economist Intelligence Unit with BCFN, Italy is scoring significantly in its fight against food waste, and with the help of national policies against industrial food loss and waste, such as the Gadda Law, it is 4th in the ranking of virtuous countries tackling food loss and waste.
1) Make a reasoned list: before shopping, check what you really need, make a list - and stick to it - remember that wasting food means wasting money
2) When you are cooking, keep an eye on quantities and only cook what you can eat
3) Check your labels: always monitor the 'eat before' dates
4) When storing food in the fridge, put the short-life food in front and store in the freezer what you are not likely to eat soon
5) Recipes against food waste: don't bin leftovers and food waste, they can become new creative dishes
Industrial/Organic Raises $1.3 Million to Ferment Your Food Waste Into Sellable Stuff
The latest is Industrial/Organic, a Brooklyn and soon-to-be Newark-based company which just raised a seed round of $1.3 million led by hometown venture firm Brooklyn Bridge Ventures.
Industrial/Organic Raises $1.3 Million to Ferment Your Food Waste Into Sellable Stuff
The Brooklyn startup's raise is backed by hometown VC Brooklyn Bridge Ventures.
By Tyler Woods / REPORTER
Urban farming. (Image via Smart Cities NYC)
Nature, man. It’s a powerful force.
We don’t get too much contact with it here in Brooklyn, but that hasn’t stopped a host of city startups from trying to rethink our relationship with the soil.
The latest is Industrial/Organic, a Brooklyn and soon-to-be Newark-based company which just raised a seed round of $1.3 million led by hometown venture firm Brooklyn Bridge Ventures.
“When I funded the company, it was little more than a science project in a garage in Brooklyn and soon, they’ll open up a waste processing facility in Newark—one that didn’t require tens of millions of dollars to setup and also won’t pollute the local neighborhood with odor,” wrote Brooklyn Bridge Ventures founder Charlie O’Donnell in a post last week. “It won’t throw off dangerous gases, and yes, the process will make a profit.”
According to O’Donnell, the company’s main products will be organic fertilizers and cleaning products.
Industrial/Organic works by a process of rapid fermentation of food waste, the stuff you scrape off your plate before washing it or the eggshells you toss in the trash can.
“Food waste is 75% moisture, which we draw out in a multi-step process following a rapid biological digestion that sterilizes and preserves organic matter,” according to the company. “This byproduct is first used for energy generation and then cleaned for reuse. We see a future where this reclaimed water is substituted for agricultural and industrial use. The leftover solids are processed into an organic fertilizer that is microbially active, providing nutrients, probiotics and organic matter to soils.”
Pretty neat.