Food delivery giant Just Eat Takeaway’s German arm has introduced plastic-free food boxes using Xampla’s plant-based, 100% biobased Morro Coating.
In addition to its partnership with seaweed packaging maker Notpla, Just Eat Takeaway has collaborated with another British sustainable packaging startup for its newest plastic-free move, this time in Germany.
Lieferando, as the platform is known in Germany, has teamed up with British eco materials innovation startup Xampla and Finnish packaging giant Huhtamaki to trial plastic-free takeaway boxes in the country.
They’re lined with Morro, Xampla’s proprietary coating, a plastic-free, PFAS-free, 100% biobased alternative made from natural plant polymers. It means Lieferando’s 41,000 restaurant partners can now order the sustainable packaging on its partner webshop.
“We are committed to making responsible choices that not only benefit our partners and consumers, but also contribute positively to the planet, and we’re looking forward to working with Xampla to encourage more partners to adopt plastic-free packaging,” said Jaz Rabadia, global sustainability head at Just Eat Takeaway, which will soon be acquired by South African investment group Prosus for $4.2B.
Xampla’s Morro Coating offers the same properties as the plastic version without the harm
Courtesy: Xampla
The folding cartons are produced by Huhtamaki, following a supply deal it struck with Xampla last year. Made from sustainably sourced corrugated paper, they’re fully recyclable and are described as having “good rigidity and heat-retaining properties”. Further, they can be used for greasy/oily foods, which are traditionally difficult to hold in non-plastic packaging.
This is thanks to the Morro coating, an alternative to both fossil-derived and renewable plastic coatings that delivers on technical specs too: it is food-contact-safe, has strong water and oxygen barrier performance, and can be used on a variety of substrates. Plus, it’s free from Per- and Polyfluorinated Substances (aka PFAS, a group of forever chemicals that are damaging to human health).
The plastic industry, itself a subset of the fossil-fuel industry (most plastic is made from crude oil production sidestreams) is responsible for 3.4% of global emissions, a share that will only increase as production triples by 2060. And despite 430 million tonnes of plastic waste being generated globally every year, only 9% is recycled. This is an enormous problem since plastic takes between 20 to 500 years to break down, populating landfills and leaking microplastics into our soil and water supply.
Meanwhile, over 90% of plastic pollution comes from single-use products, a figure that has prompted global policymakers to attempt to curb their use. Certain single-use plastics have been banned in the UK and US states like California, and the EU is set to ban all single-use plastic by the end of the decade.
Xampla’s Morro coating is exempt from the latter’s Single-Use Plastic Directive, making it an even more attractive proposition for the foodservice industry.
Courtesy: Xampla
“Morro Coating is designed to seamlessly integrate into existing packaging processes, offering a powerful alternative to plastic. Together, we are setting a new standard for environmentally responsible food packaging,” said Xampla CEO Alexandra French.
Founded by Simon Hombersley, Tuomas Knowles and Marc Rodriguez Garcia, Xampla spun out from Cambridge University in 2018, and has raised $17.6M to date. Apart from the coating, it makes edible and soluble films, as well as microcapsules for fragrances and active ingredients, all under the Morro brand.
They’re built on a multi-patented tech platform that uses plant proteins from a variety of feedstocks, including peas, potatoes and rapeseed, as well as waste stream ingredients. “Choosing just one raw material has the potential to exhaust natural resources, so by being flexible and adaptable with our feedstocks, we highlight the true power of plants,” the company explains.
Just Eat Takeaway: a sustainable packaging leader
Xampla has established partnerships with a host of companies, including UK-based recipe box startup Gousto, Chinese dairy giant Yili, Uk soft drink leader Britvic, and British skincare label Elemis. Now, Just Eat Takeaway has joined that list.
The collaboration comes after initial testing by Just Eat for Business in the UK, with several Lieferando restaurant partners already having trialled the packaging. “To encourage the use of plastic-free takeaway boxes and promote early adoption, Lieferando has trialled 500 boxes with selected restaurant partners in Hamburg, Essen, Munich and Wiesloch,” a Lieferando spokesperson told Green Queen.
Just Eat Takeaway has been an early adopter of sustainable packaging in the food delivery space, having worked with Notpla since 2018. Its seaweed-lined boxes have appeared in 10 European countries with the platform – the UK, Ireland, Poland, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy and Switzerland – including at UEFA Champions League matches.
“This partnership has no impact on the work we already do with Notpla. Supporting our partners with a range of sustainable alternatives to single-use plastics is part of Just Eat Takeaway.com’s broader efforts to address plastic pollution in the on-demand delivery industry,” the company’s representative said. “This partnership will further expand Lieferando’s sustainable packaging range alongside what we already offer through Notpla.”
In an analysis of the climate goals of the world’s top food delivery services by Four Paws, Just Eat Switzerland topped the list, while four other subsidiaries made the top six in the 18-company ranking – that said, even the Swiss platform only scored 32 out of 100.
“We are pleased to be working with Lieferando and Huhtamaki, two forward-thinking partners who share our commitment to the planet through reducing plastic pollution,” said French.
In a world where greenwashing is rampant, especially when it comes to packaging and plastic use, Xample sure feels like a breath of fresh, plastic-pollution-free air.
Based in Cologne, Vytal Global has raised €14.2M ($15.5M) in growth funding to fuel the expansion of its reusable food packaging solutions.
German eco packaging startup Vytal Global has secured €14.2M ($15.5M) in investment to scale its operations across Europe and enter the US market.
The company has just secured €8M ($8.7M) from Inven Capital and NRW.Venture, adding to the €6.2M ($6.8M) it raised in a funding round last summer. It brings the company’s total venture capital raised to €26M, a sign of investors’ faith in its smart reusable packaging solutions that outperform single-use on cost.
“This new funding comes less than nine months after our last raise and reflects an incredibly successful 2024 for the Vytal team,” said Vytal co-founder and managing director Tim Breker. He added that Inven Capital’s expertise would allow the firm to scale up and “make tech-enabled reusable packaging the new standard in gastronomy, events, and entertainment globally”.
Courtesy: Vytal Global
Taking on single-use plastic
Founded in 2020 by Josephine Kreische, Fabian Barthel, Sven Witehöfft, and Breker, Vytal utilises data analytics to deliver cost-effective solutions to single-use plastic packaging for a range of businesses.
Its business model combines reusable products with smart tech and “seamless service”, with integration into multiple point-of-service (POS) systems, adaptable operations, a fair pay-per-use pricing system, and a large selection of containers.
These include microwaveable bowls in several sizes; burger, pizza and sushi containers; cutlery; and coffee cups. They’re made from materials like polypropylene, thermoplastic elastomers, and/or stainless steel, depending on the product.
So while the company is providing an alternative to single-use plastic, it doesn’t ditch plastic altogether, arguing that the “key difference lies in the circular system”. “Single-use plastic has a short usage span but a long lifespan, taking 20 to 450 years to decompose. That’s why we rely on our reusable system: the plastic has a much longer life cycle and is fully recycled at the end of its ‘life’,” the company says on its website.
“Today’s packaging solutions, especially single-use plastic packaging, are unnecessarily energy- and resource-intensive compared to smart reusable packaging solutions,” said Kristyna Machova, investment director at Inven. “We value Vytal’s innovative use of data and technology as a key differentiator, fostering a circular economy where reusable packaging is cost-competitive as well as superior in user experience.”
Courtesy: Vytal Global
Vytal looks to go global with big partnerships
In the space of five years, Vytal has employed a successful tech licencing platform to create a network of subsidiaries across Europe, and says it is servicing 7,000 partners in 24 countries.
Last year, it expanded internationally and added franchise partners in Albania, Greece, the UAE, and South Africa, and set up a dedicated business to serve global brands like PepsiCo, UEFA, and Live Nation’s Insomniac Festival Group, among others. This marked its expansion beyond hospitality into large-scale companies and events.
Now, it is taking its expansion journey even further, with a large portion of the new funds dedicated to taking the business into the US, while strengthening its foothold in Europe. The capital will also help enhance its technology and unlock new brand partnerships, building on the 19 million tonnes of packaging waste Vytal says it has diverted so far.
Courtesy: Vytal Global
According to the UNEP, reusable packaging systems can provide a reduction of over 20% in total annual plastic leakage into the environment by 2040. Meanwhile, converting just 20% of single-use packaging to reuse models is forecast to be a $10B opportunity.
And consumers recognise this too, with 64% of Brits agreeing that reusable, refillable and returnable packaging models are more effective at cutting waste than recycling. Another poll suggests that 80% of consumers in the UK and the US believe we have a collective responsibility to reduce single-use plastics, with 57% worried about the amount of single-use plastic and unrecyclable materials in takeaway food and drink packaging.
This is putting the onus on businesses to greenify their packaging, putting firms like Vytal in the spotlight. In 2024, it nearly doubled its revenue, just as other eco-packaging companies like Notpla, Nfinite Nanotech, and Ionkraft all secured funding.
“We have been following the Vytal team and progress since the early days and are convinced that they are best positioned to reap the business opportunity of transforming the packaging industry towards circularity,” said Machova.
Coffee giant Starbucks has introduced biodegradable straws made from plant-based materials in Japan to cut plastic use and waste.
Five years after ditching plastic for paper, Starbucks Japan is bidding adieu to paper for bioplastics.
The coffee company is overhauling its straws by swapping paper with a biodegradable, plant-based polymer, marking the company’s latest efforts to greenify its supply chain.
The straw is made from Green Planet, a bioplastic made by Japanese materials company Kaneka. The firm’s forks, knives, stirrers and spoons are already used by Starbucks at its stores across the country.
Now, its straws are available at 32 locations in the Okinawa Prefecture, ahead of a nationwide rollout in March. Thicker straws for Frappuccino drinks will follow a month later.
From oil to plants
Courtesy: Starbucks
Starbucks began its transition away from fossil-fuel-derived plastic straws in Japan in 2018, launching paper straws certified by the Forest Stewardship Council in 2020, followed by paper cups for takeaway drinks (which have their own challenges), cutlery from biomass materials, and resin cups for in-store iced beverages.
Paper straws, however, are unpopular with customers – most absorb liquid and turn soggy (or break) before a drink is finished, ruining the user experience and potentially creating more waste. They’re also not all that great for the environment. Research has found these straws to contain more forever chemicals (or PFAS) than plastic, which can stay in the atmosphere for decades, contaminate water supplies, and cause a range of health issues.
Green Planet is a 100% plant-derived polymer that degrades naturally into CO2 and water by microorganisms that live in soil and seawater. It utilises plant oils instead of harmful oil derivatives, and can be used in a variety of applications besides straws and cutlery, such as shopping bags, food packaging, and the development of future-friendly fibres and non-woven fabrics.
The material is said to help mitigate ocean pollution with waste plastics, including microplastics. The Green Planet straws emit less carbon than the FSC-certified paper currently used by Starbucks, and halves the waste (by weight) created by discarded straws from its stores.
Starbucks attempts to go greener
Courtesy: Starbucks
The move is a marker of Starbucks’s larger goal of making its consumer-facing packaging fully reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2030, while being sourced from 50% recycled materials and using 50% fewer virgin fossil-fuel-derived sources. It also aims to halve its waste by the end of the decade.
With an eye towards that goal, it launched a new paper cup in the US last year, which includes 30% post-consumer recycled fibre, with less paper and plastic needed to produce it.
In addition to packaging, Starbucks is also making its physical stores more sustainable, aligning them with vigorous third-party standards across eight environmental impact areas: water stewardship, partner engagement, energy efficiency, waste diversion, renewable energy, responsible materials and sites and communities.
Working with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and SCS Global Services, Starbucks has nearly 6,100 of these Greener Stores, and aims to hit 10,000 this year. Within Japan, there are already 200 locations certified as eco-friendly – and about 900 sites recycle coffee grounds, which are one of the biggest sources of food waste for the company.
On the coffee side of things, it’s working with farmers to shift plantation patterns for greater productivity, and has developed a range of climate-resilient arabica varietals to safeguard the crop from climate change. And to make it easier for consumers to choose more sustainable options, it has finally scrapped the surcharge for plant-based milk in the US.
The take-back schemes run by UK supermarkets to recycle soft plastics have misled consumers, with 70% of this waste being burned instead, an investigation has found.
Tesco and Sainsbury’s – the UK’s two largest retailers – are being accused of misleading shoppers over their plastic recycling schemes, after campaigners inserted trackers inside soft plastic packages.
Between July 2023 and 2024, members of campaign group Everyday Plastic placed Apple AirTags in 40 bundles of soft plastic collected at Tesco and Sainsbury’s stores across England, as part of the retailers’ take-back schemes.
But instead of recycling these soft plastics – as they had pledged – 70% of them were actually burned. The rest ended up at recycling facilities that downcycle them into lower-value products (like bin bags, carrier bags, and composite timber boards), and 80% of these were sent to recycling facilities abroad, mainly to Turkey.
This takes advantage of consumers’ goodwill and misleads them about the environmental impact of soft plastics, the campaigners argue. “Our trackers reveal the hard truth about soft plastic recycling schemes at supermarkets – soft plastic packaging is not getting recycled,” said Alison Colclough, research director at Everyday Plastic, which carried out the investigation with the Environmental Investigation Agency.
“Supermarkets, waste companies and the government acknowledge that there are significant challenges to recycling soft plastic,” she added. “Our tracker investigation supports these claims and shows that soft plastic is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to recycle at scale.”
Courtesy: Everyday Plastic
Why recycling soft plastics is a problem for supermarkets
To tackle their growing plastic footprint, major supermarkets in the UK began their take-back schemes in 2021, encouraging consumers to collect their plastic packaging waste and bring it to the store for recycling. As of October 2022, this initiative has been rolled out in over 6,000 locations, including those of Tesco and Sainsbury’s, which command 43% of the country’s grocery share.
Plastic, which is petroleum-based, and terrible for the planet and human health. It takes anywhere between 20 and 500 years to decompose, and producing it generates more emissions than the entire aviation sector. But we’re on course to manufacture three times as much plastic by 2060 – and emissions from this sector are set to take up a fifth of the global carbon budget by mid-century.
But soft plastics – from the shrink wrap on cucumbers, to salad bags and packaging for Quorn – are the most concerning form of plastic packaging, with 215 billion new items placed in the UK market in 2023 alone. At those rates, the country’s recycling capacity would need to increase by 350%.
Tesco has called soft plastic an “important part of our packaging portfolio” that helps preserve food and prevent waste (although that claim is shaky at best). Sainsbury’s has echoed this point by noting that it “helps us deliver fresh, undamaged produce”, but it acknowledged that it “can have a negative impact on our planet”.
The problem, though, is that soft plastics are notoriously hard to recycle, especially since the end recycling market in the UK is limited. In 2022, only 7% of soft plastics placed on the domestic market were collected for kerbside recycling, which is unsurprising given that 88% of local authorities don’t collect soft plastics at the kerbside for recycling.
Even if soft plastics are theoretically recyclable, the UK’s infrastructure only has the ability to recycle a quarter of the soft plastic placed on the market. This is why it sends most of its plastic waste offshore, making it the fourth-largest exporter of these materials. Last year, it exported 568,000 tonnes of plastic waste, a 10% increase annually, a quarter of which went to Turkey, and a fifth to the Netherlands.
“The take-back schemes are being presented as a solution, which is diverting attention from the main issue that can’t be overlooked: far too much unnecessary plastic packaging is being produced,” said Colclough.
Tesco and Sainsbury’s respond to investigation
Courtesy: Everyday Plastic
Of the 40 AirTags, 22 ended up at front-of-store collection points at Sainsbury’s stores – but only 11 reached a final destination. Six of these packaging bundles were turned into fuel pellets to be used in energy production for furnaces and kilns, while five were incinerated for energy recovery. Neither of these measures is considered a form of recycling.
As for the ones that didn’t get to a final destination, they were scattered around waste transfer stores, a Sainsbury’s distribution centre, reprocessing facilities, and a motorway in Europe – and two never left the supermarket.
At Tesco, only six of the 18 trackers ended up at a final destination, with one bundle being converted to fuel pellets, and five sent to facilities that repurpose plastic waste into lower-value products. This practice is called downcycling, and the repurposed items are themselves difficult to recycle or dispose of at end of life.
“We believe that none of our tracked bundles of soft plastic whose final destination is known, ended up at a closed-loop recycling facility,” the report suggests. The remaining dozen packages were last seen at repurposing facilities, a Tesco distribution centre, and waste handling plants.
Courtesy: Everyday Plastic
“We have a clear plan to remove packaging wherever possible, and reducing, reusing and recycling it where we can’t,” a Tesco spokesperson said. “Given the challenges of collecting soft plastics at kerbside, we have soft plastics collection points in our stores for customers.
“Where it is not possible to recycle the collected plastic, we put it to alternative uses to avoid these materials going to landfill, for example using it for energy recovery. We know there is a lot more progress to be made, and the infrastructure to recycle soft plastics at scale in the UK and the EU still has a way to go. We are committed to working constructively with the industry and government to find new solutions for all materials, including those previously considered waste.”
A representative for Sainsbury’s added: “We’re always seeking ways to positively manage the end-of-life of our packaging. Our ‘return to store recycling scheme’ provides the opportunity to recycle more soft plastic until kerbside collection becomes available in 2026-27.
“We collect a small volume of flexible plastic overall in-store. The majority is in good condition and so is recycled. However, when materials are soiled or damaged, then they may need to be converted for energy, which is managed by our supplier.”
Supermarkets and government urged to back global plastics treaty
Courtesy: Everyday Plastic
The investigation has thrown fresh doubt over supermarkets’ recycling schemes. A 2021 survey revealed that almost all Brits felt recycling soft plastics would be good (96%) and worthwhile (91%). And in the last year, awareness about take-back schemes has grown, from 31% of citizens in 2023 to 48% now.
“There is a huge gap between what consumers are told about recycling and the shocking reality,” said Katie-Scarlett Wetherall, a lawyer at ClientEarth, which has published a legal briefing warning that soft plastic recycling claims are misleading. “Consumer protection authorities such as the UK Competition and Markets Authority have grounds to legally challenge these claims. Supermarkets, fast-moving consumer goods companies and the packaging sector must be alive to this greenwashing risk.”
Both Sainsbury’s and Tesco are part of the UK Plastics Pact, whose members are responsible for 75% of consumer plastic packaging, and have pledged to recycle or compost 70% of packaging while eliminating single-use plastics by 2025. This is an effort coordinated by UK waste reduction charity WRAP.
Helen Bird, WRAP’s head of materials systems transformation, defended the take-back schemes, noting their importance before kerbside soft plastic recycling comes into force in 2028: “While not perfect, these have acted as an important catalyst for crucial investment in UK recycling infrastructure and end markets and instilled new habits in people to separate bags and wrapping for recycling.”
Next month, global leaders will convene in the final negotiations for the UN’s plastics treaty, which is calling for an end to plastic pollution and a 40% reduction in production by 2040. Everyday Plastic is now asking Sainsbury’s and Tesco to publicly push the UK to support the treaty.
It’s also urging the government to set legally binding targets to cut single-use plastic, remove plastic packaging from unprocessed fruits and vegetables by 2030, ban plastic waste exports by 2027, suspend new incineration activity, prevent chemical recycling as a plastic treatment option, and provide financial incentives to adopt reuse systems.
Meanwhile, supermarkets must significantly reduce their single-use, non-essential packaging, stop exporting collected soft plastic waste, and be transparent with consumers about the challenges of recycling these materials.
UK seaweed packaging startup Notpla has closed a £20M ($26.8M) Series A round to expand to the US and replace 100 million single-use plastic items by 2026.
Notpla, the London-based maker of sustainable packaging, has snapped up £20M (£26.8M) in a Series A extension round, doubling its initial £10M raise in 2021.
The round was led by United Bankers and featured Singapore state fund Temasek’s Catalytic Capital for Climate & Health (C3H), as well as existing investors Horizons Ventures and Astanor. EIT Food’s AgriFoodInvest, the Schmidt Family Foundation, Kibo Invest, Radicle Impact, and Ocean Born Foundation also participated, among others.
The fresh capital will help accelerate the Earthshot Prize winner’s expansion to the US, expand its portfolio, and scale up manufacturing, with a goal of selling 100 million units of its seaweed-based packaging products in the next two years.
“Our investors recognise the commercial potential of our technology and our unique solutions. This funding allows us to accelerate our growth and continue leading the market in sustainable innovation,” said Notpla co-CEO Pierre Paslier, who founded the company with fellow CEO Rodrigo García González a decade ago.
“This round not only validates our approach but also positions us to capitalise on the growing demand for truly plastic-free packaging solutions in global markets, especially as we look towards expansion into the US,” added González.
How Notpla uses seaweed to tackle plastic pollution
Courtesy: Notpla
Notpla is solving one of the planet’s biggest issues: plastic waste. Derived from petroleum, plastics take between 20 and 500 years to break down, and are responsible for 3.4% of global emissions (a share set to double by 2060). We’re putting so much plastic waste in the ocean, it is expected to outweigh fish in our waters by mid-century.
There are over 3,200 toxic substances present in plastic, and microplastics in our waterways end up in our food system, harming human health. Meanwhile, more than 90% of plastic pollution comes from single-use products.
Notpla’s alternatives are made by extracting natural compounds from seaweed and plants without chemical modifications, and they can be disposed of in three ways. They’re 100% recyclable, industrially compostable, as well as home-compostable, breaking down in four to six weeks.
The company’s flagship product is Ooho, an edible packaging solution for liquids and gels. This, alongside its coating and film innovations (used in food packaging boxes), is produced with the gelatinous part of seaweed (which makes up 20% of the plant). When this is being extracted, it leaves behind fibres and biomass that can be turned into zero-waste paper and rigid materials.
The latter is used to make biodegradable disposable cutlery, with Notpla launching an ice cream spoon earlier this year. It is additionally developing laundry sachets, energy gel pods, and sachets for herbs, seasonings, and bath oils.
And while conventional containers and bioplastic alternatives can contain petrol-based coatings that “stick around forever” and release harmful toxins, the startup leverages the seaweed’s components to provide the grease and moisture resistance needed by food boxes and bypass fossil-fuel-derived polymers.
“Our goal has always been to create products and materials that can make a real difference,” González said. “From our early days producing Ooho in our student kitchen, to seeing runners consume them in their thousands at the London Marathon, all the way through to today where we’re making millions of real, credible packaging solutions for industries – it’s just huge.”
Eco packaging on the up as regulators tighten single-use plastic stance
Courtesy: Notpla
Notpla’s increasing popularity can perhaps be summed up by the fact that at the end of 2023, it had replaced 7.3 million pieces of single-use plastic in 10 countries across Europe – but it has more than doubled that to 16 million this year already.
This is thanks to its growing list of partnerships, including the likes of catering giant Compass Group, sporting goods retailer Decathlon, and food delivery company Just Eat Takeaway.com (which has used the packaging at UEFA Champions League matches). The football connection is strong – its innovations are being used at 50 stadiums across the UK, including Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur – while it has also teamed up with London concert venue the O2 Arena.
Last year, Notpla’s seaweed packaging became the first material to be recognised as plastic-free under the EU’s Single-Use Plastics Directive, following a nine-month verification by the Dutch government (which has imposed a 25-cent levy on food delivery and takeaway packaging).
The EU itself is set to ban all single-use plastic by the end of the decade. And certain single-use plastics have been banned in the UK and US states like California as well. Notpla’s planned move stateside comes weeks after the US indicated it will support the UN’s global plastics treaty to impose limits on plastic production.
These legislative measures have made alternatives to single-use plastics more and more important. Notpla’s seaweed-based solutions represent up to 70% lower greenhouse gas emissions than conventional plastic, helping avoid 250 tonnes of emissions in 2023. Others innovating with seaweed packaging include California’s Sway, Scottish startup Oceanium, Oslo-based B’Zeos, and New York’s Loliware.
Sustainable packaging startups have also attracted investors in droves. These companies raised $221M in Europe last year, an all-time high that was double the funding in 2022. Notpla’s Series A extension is among the largest rounds this year, alongside Paques Biomaterials’s €14M ($15.7M) raise in January.
Notpla’s strong customer traction and product innovation position them well for further business expansion, as they realise even more impact and reduce the environmental harm caused by single-use plastics,” said Ryan Tan, director of Temase’s C3H fund.
A host of brands are innovating with oat milk powders in multiple flavours to cut packaging waste and offer personalisation – here are seven of the best.
Oat milk has quickly become the darling of the plant-based milk space, which is by far the biggest money maker in the global vegan food market.
Ever since Oatly took over coffee shops in the 2010s, oat milk has been on a stellar rise. Now, virtually every plant-based milk company has an oat product, since the ingredient has taken over as the bestselling base for alt-dairy in certain markets, and is aiming for almond milk’s throne in the US.
At nearly $3B, milk alone makes up over a third (36%) of the US plant-based market. Within this, almond milk accounts for 56% of the alt-milk market, but its dollar share has fallen by 61% since 2021. Much of this has been captured by oat milk, which accounted for 24% of the segment’s sales last year.
Estimates suggest that oat milk will be a $5.6B market in 2033, with the number of brands and options proliferating all across the world. This has also necessitated diversity in offerings – consumers want cleaner-label, cheaper and versatile products, and brands are coming up with new ways to deliver these attributes.
Liquid oat milk is great, but most of this comes in Tetra Paks and requires a lot of packaging, which in turn amps up the financial and environmental cost of transportation. And since most of the world’s waste doesn’t really get recycled, the post-use cycle leaves a lot to be desired.
Enter oat milk powders. Several companies are making blitzed-up, dehydrated versions of oat milk that you can just add water to, reducing the amount of packaging and shelf space needed, while providing greater customisability. You want an oat cream? Add less water. Do you want a thinner milk that resembles skimmed? Add more.
It also solves a key pain point. Oat milk is one of the toughest plant-based milks to make at home, since the slimy texture puts many consumers off. While there are ways to remove the slime and make a milk that has the desired mouthfeel and flavour, it takes a lot more time and effort, and specialty ingredients that aren’t exactly pantry staples.
While it’s a nascent market and more research is needed to determine the true value of these products, you only have to look at the success of brands that have made oat milk powders their primary offerings, and the fact that traditional oat milk makers have also begun innovating with powdered versions, to know that the demand is there.
Here are seven of the best companies making oat milk powders.
Overherd
Headquarters: London, UK Founders/parent company: Sandy Eyre Total funding: Undisclosed
Courtesy: Overherd
Launched in 2023, Overherd is among the youngest companies in the space, and makes only one thing: powdered oat milk. The product is made up of 68% gluten-free oats, coconut MCT powder, and chicory root fibre, and fortified with calcium carbonate and vitamin B12. It can be shaken, stirred or blended, used as a barista milk, and has fewer calories, fat and sugar than market leaders like Oatly and Alpro. Plus, Overherd uses 90% less packaging and is 10 times lighter.
Mighty
Headquarters: Leeds, UK Founders/parent company: Tom and Nick Watkins Total funding: £8M
Courtesy: Mighty
Mighty originally began as a pea milk company, before expanding into oat and other milks. In early 2023, it brought out a powdered oat milk made up of 90% oats, coconut oil powder, and salt. The company says each pouch makes up to four litres of oat milk, and lasts two years on the shelf. It can be stirred straight into hot tea and coffee, used in baking as you would conventional milk powder, and blended to make liquid oat milk.
JOI
Headquarters: Miami, US Founders/parent company: Dave Korstad, Isabelle Shu and Tony Jimenez Total funding: $2M
Courtesy: JOI
One of the original new-format alt-milk brands, JOI is well-known for its nut milk pastes. But it recently unveiled an oat milk powder (to great reviews), and true to its name, this contains Just One Ingredient: oats. The JOI powder can be stirred straight into tea and coffee, or blended to make milk (a teaspoon per cup of water is the recommended amount). Each pack can make 8 quarts (7.5 litres) of milk, which lasts up to seven days in the fridge. For the baristas, it has launched a powdered oat milk creamer too.
Nimbus
Headquarters: Sydney, Australia Founders/parent company: Alexandra Mills Total funding: Undisclosed
Courtesy: Nimbus
Another 2023-launched company, Nimbus makes two oat milk powders in original and mocha flavours. The plain version contains 93% oats, and is complemented with avocado oil powder, salt, xantham gum and calcium carbonate. The mocha version additionally contains coffee and cocoa powders, and coconut sugar. Once blended, it can be used as a barista milk for frothy drinks, and each pouch makes five litres of milk. The recycled packaging weighs ten times less than cartons too.
Blue Farm
Courtesy: Blue Farm
Headquarters: Berlin, Germany Founders/parent company: Philip von Have and Katia Pott Total funding: €3M
Blue Farm is a company all about oat milk powders, and has an extensive range to show for it. The core lineup comprises a Pure Oat Base, which contains 100% fermented oats, a calcium-fortified version with red algae, a barista edition with oat beta-glucan and sodium carbonate, as well as cocoa and vanilla flavours. These can be used in a variety of applications – all you need to do is mix two spoons of powder with 200ml of water. Additionally, Blue Farm has various functional lattes like pumpkin, matcha, turmeric, Supreme Greens, and Chagaccino, among others.
EcoMil
Headquarters: Murcia, Spain Founders/parent company: Nutriops Total funding: Undisclosed
Courtesy: EcoMil
The oldest brand on this list, EcoMil pioneered this alt-milk format with its almond milk powder in 1991. Now, it’s one of Europe’s leading manufacturers of plant-based milks. Its powdered oat milk contains 56% oats, corn maltodextrin, dehydrated sunflower oil, and vanilla. It comes in 400g tins that can make five litres of milk, and can be used in hot drinks as well as cooking applications.
Oatbedient
Headquarters: Singapore Founders/parent company: Elaine and Darren Teo Total funding: Undisclosed
Courtesy: Oatbedient
Founded in 2022, Singapore-based Oatbedient began as an oat milk powder company, but has since diversified into liquid milks too. But it’s an outlier in that these ready-to-mix milks are meant to be drunk on their own, since they’re really an alternative to malted milk powders. Its core range includes a plain version (with oat milk powder, maltodextrin and sugar), a Lite unsweetened version, one with chia seeds, and a chocolate flavour. It has since also introduced latte, mocha and matcha versions. Each pack contains 12 sachets, which need to be mixed with 180ml of hot water.
Hong Kong-based charity Redress has announced the results of the 2024 Redress Design Award, with the top prize winner getting a chance to work with Tommy Hilfiger.
Redress, the Asia-focused charity tackling the fashion industry’s environmental impact, has named Hong Kong designer Tiger Chung as the winner of the 2024 Redress Design Award’s top prize.
Described as the world’s leading sustainable fashion design competition, the Redress Design Award aims to empower designers about circular fashion to reduce the industry’s climate impact and waste crisis. The 14th edition was held at the ongoing Centrestage Hong Kong trade show last week.
As the winner of the top prize, Chung will now get to work with Tommy Hilfiger on a sustainable design project for retail, and spend time under the wing of the fashion giant’s sustainability team to deepen his skills and understanding of eco-friendly production and marketing. He will further receive mentorship sessions from Tommy Hilfiger, which sponsored the top prize this year.
Chung, whose collection The Wanderer exploited waste streams like car seat covers and discarded sofas, called it a “huge opportunity to showcase circular solutions on a global stage”.
“Fashion is rightly criticised for its negative environmental impact, which is a huge concern for designers like myself,” he said. “But we intend to change this – and make fashion better for the planet.”
Tommy Hilfiger champions circularity at Redress Design Award
Courtesy: Redress
The fashion industry is responsible for a tenth of global emissions – five times higher than the aviation sector. It is also set to take up a quarter of the world’s carbon budget by 2050. This makes it one of the most polluting industries, thanks in large part to the waste crisis it’s currently undergoing.
The equivalent of one rubbish truck of textiles is landfilled or burned every second. And this is showing no signs of stopping: between 2015 and 2030, textile waste has been estimated to rise by 60%. On a wider note, more than 80% of a product’s climate footprint comes during the design stage.
This is why Redress is pushing designers to champion the circular economy, which involves regenerating nature, reusing and upcycling materials, and taking into account a product’s full life cycle.
The 10 finalists of the 2024 Redress Design Award – which partners with 170+ academic institutions – were from all over the world, selected from applications across 55 global regions. Creations on its runway were made using circular design techniques and textile waste – from denim end-of-rolls to a shredded military parachute.
They participated in a host of circular educational challenges. In Vietnam, a low-waste design challenge at Tal Apparel’s factory explored commercial solutions for pre-consumer garment waste. Similarly, a Packaging with Purpose challenge in partnership with Delta Global looked at how eco packaging can connect more consumers to a brand’s value.
“Circular design is foundational to a sustainable future for fashion,” said Jessica Wei, senior sustainability director at Tommy Hilfiger Asia-Pacific, and a judge of the 2024 awards. By 2030, all of the fashion label’s products will contribute to the circular economy through design, use and end of life. That’s also why Tommy Hilfiger partnered with Redress to help educate designers about circular fashion design.
Apart from its support, Chung will also benefit from an HK$50,000 ($6,400) development fund, a lockstitch machine and overlock sewing machine from Japanese company Juki, and a one-year subscription to Bloomsbury Fashion Central. He also won the Hong Kong Best Prize, which recognised the highest-scoring designer from the city, which carried an HK15,000 ($1,900) prize money.
Tian Ruyin, a designer from China, was the runner-up, earning a mentorship with sustainable fashion designer Orsola de Castro, an HK15,000 ($1,900) grant, and a lockstitch machine. And British designer Silvia Acien Parrilla won the People’s Choice award, receiving a Juki sewing machine after impressing global voters with her designs.
All the finalists join the Redress Alumni Network, a community of over 300 previous finalists and semi-finalists from more than 50 regions (over half of them are based in Asia). These designers have made strides globally, dressing celebrities like Taylor Swift and Heidi Klum, appearing at the Olympics, and visiting the Pacific to tackle microplastic pollution with Uniqlo.
“This competition win is a broader victory for the industry, which needs urgent injections of creativity from designers, and more engagement from consumers if we’re to tackle the growing waste crisis raging globally and particularly in Asia,” said Redress founder Christina Dean. “Urgent change and collaboration at the design stage is needed.”
Dean founded Redress in 2007 to inspire positive environmental change and promote sustainability in fashion by reducing textile waste, pollution, and water and energy consumption. A decade later, she established an offshoot fashion brand called The R Collective, which rescues textile waste from luxury brands, mills and manufacturers and upcycles these materials into elegant clothing pieces.
Courtesy: Redress
Redress will again collaborate with Tommy Hilfiger to present a celebratory runway of the awards’ emerging Chinese designers at Shanghai Fashion Week (October 10-18).
Speaking to Green Queen in February, Dean recalled her biggest learnings since starting Redress 17 years ago. “I’ve come to respect the fashion industry, its suppliers, its spinners, weavers, farmers, etc., very deeply, and I see such wonderful and enormous talent, generosity, determination, and humanity and love throughout the business,” she said.
“I’ve met the most incredible activists working in the fastest and cheapest of the big fast-fashion brands; I’ve met recyclers with bigger brains than their machines; and I’ve met CEOs with more conviction for change than prolific activists,” Dean added.
“So I’ve come to realise that the humans behind the machines, spreadsheets, steering wheels, and boardrooms of fashion are pretty amazing people, who bring optimism to the challenges at hand. We are all only human, against some inhumanly complex issues.”
US plant-based milk brand Milkadamia has introduced 2D-printed Flat Pack sheets that cut packaging waste by 94%, and it’s starting with oat milk.
Known for its macadamia milks, Milkadamia is diversifying its lineup with a new product format and milk base to tackle the sector’s waste and carbon footprint through ‘precycling’.
The Illinois-based startup has launched Flat Pack, a range of 2D-printed plant-based milk sheets that are shelf-stable and can be blended with water at home. The debut product is an oat milk, which will be showcased at the Newtopia Now trade event in Denver (August 25-28).
Milkadamia began with oat milk “simply because the oat product was formulated first and oat milk is driving growth in the plant milk category”, CEO Jim Richards tells Green Queen, adding that the sheets will be available online and in stores in January.
While almond still represents the highest share, oat milk is the fastest-growing milk analogue in the US, with shelf-stable sales up by 14.2% in the 52 weeks ending July 14, according to SPINS data reported by AgFunderNews. Oat is also the number one base in new alt-milk launches in the country.
“We are using organic oats, which fit with the Milkadamia ethos,” says Richards, before revealing that other Flat Pack variants are imminent. “Almond, macadamia, and other variants will follow in rapid succession.”
An inclusive product for people with and without blenders
Courtesy: Milkadamia/ Boltenkoff/Getty Images | Composite by Green Queen
Milkadamia was among the earliest macadamia milk brands, originating in Australia and launching stateside in 2016. Its core lineup includes sweetened and unsweetened barista and vanilla-flavoured milks, with an Artisan range with multi-ingredient organic bases introduced earlier this year.
Now, it has joined the burgeoning sector of new-format plant milks, which look to further curb the planetary impact of this sector through clever technology and packaging solutions.
Milkadamia starts with an oat milk paste that is printed into sheets via a proprietary 2D-printing process, which are then covered in compact and lightweight packaging, reducing packaging waste by 94% and weight by 85%, as well as cutting down emissions from transportation.
Every Flat Pack contains five sheets, which can each make 8oz of oat milk. They’re made from fermented whole-grain oats, water, rapeseed oil, oat fibre, locust bean gum, sea salt, and bourbon vanilla, and can be used in a plethora of applications, including in frothy cappuccinos.
There are two ways to consumers can make the oat milk. The first is by blending a sheet with a cup of water for 30 seconds to a minute, until the sheet is fully dissolved. But not everyone has a blender, whether that’s due to affordability, a lack of counter space, or something else. The second method is for these folks, who can soak the sheet in water overnight in the fridge, and shake it up in the morning.
“Our aspiration is to invite everyone to the precycling journey with Flat Pack, and minimise barriers to make this innovation accessible,” says Richards. This approach, the company explains, helps shift the focus from “post-consumer waste management to proactive reduction, allowing consumers to make a direct positive impact on the planet”.
“By varying the ratio of water to sheet, consistencies from skim-milk-like through to ultra-creamy are easily attained. The milk is made fresh and to suit personal preference,” he adds.
Balancing convenience with sustainability
Courtesy: Milkadamia
Milkadamia isn’t the only one innovating with the format of plant-based milk. Germany’s Veganz has been selling its own 2D-printed oat milk sheets under the Mililk brand. But apart from sheets, brands are also making powders, nut milk pastes, and frozen concentrates.
While these products offer something new in the way of customisation, utility and efficiency, there’s something to be said about the convenience factor – are consumers willing to go the extra mile and make their own milk on a regular basis, as opposed to simply pouring it from a Tetra Pak or bottle?
“The simple act of preparing food from scratch generates a sense of fulfilment that all the conveniences of modern life cannot match,” argues Richards. “Incorporating the preparation of Flat Pack milk into a daily ritual is a little do-good and feel-good therapy.”
He adds: “Flat Pack Oat Milk is for anyone, but will not be for everyone – no product ever is. However, we believe this is a major disruptor in plant milk and hopefully far beyond. The users of Milkadamia’s Flat Pack line are specifically attracted by the trade-off with convenience.”
Lowering the environmental and economic impacts (this is a cheaper product) is a benefit that makes inconvenience “trivial compared to the cost of drifting along with the status quo”.
“Consumers have long bemoaned the volume of packaging they are forced to toss. It is a long-standing, unaddressed irritant. Stronger disaffection has been growing under the surface for years. The current state of packaging is ripe for the trade-off we’re bringing,” says Richards.
He continues: “Industry ignores the packaging disposal problem it creates and is content to shift the – largely futile – burden of recycling onto the consumer, who has few options other than to have it added to overflowing landfills or end up in our plastic- and pollution-choked oceans. Those who recognise it is unsustainable and unacceptable, who seek a better way and are willing to put in a little effort for the Earth, are Milkadamia Flat Pack customers.
“Some small conveniences are not worth their upstream and downstream impact on the environment or the consumers’ wallet. Every business should be pre-cycling to reduce packaging and other waste-creating activities.”
A coalition of cafés and restaurants are participating in a city-wide reusable cup project in Petaluma, California, with the goal of reducing waste from single-use plastics.
More than 30 eateries, including Starbucks, KFC, Dunkin’, Burger King and Peet’s Coffee, have collaborated on a first-of-its-kind reusable cup pilot in the city of Petaluma in California.
The trial will be led by the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners, which convenes the NextGen Consortium, a project co-founded by Starbucks and McDonald’s that is on a mission to overhaul single-use food packaging and drive reuse. It counts The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo as sector lead partners.
Starting on August 5, the three-month initiative will see customers be served to-go drinks in specially designed purple cups, which they can drop off at participating stores across the city. These will then be sanitised and prepared for reuse in stores.
While Starbucks has conducted over two dozen reusable cup tests around the world, by collaborating with industry partners (and competitors), the project’s reach is widened considerably. The aim is to make reusable cups the default option for takeaway drinks, just as Petaluma mulls a ban on single-use cups (it has already outlawed foam cups).
“Last year, Starbucks conducted a similar test in the same area, but we tested on our own. This year, we expanded on that through our partnership with NextGen Consortium to drive systems change,” said Helen Kao, director of reusable at Starbucks.
“What if we saturated a community, and reusables became the cultural norm? Now it’s an ecosystem of global brands, local businesses, city leaders and community groups working together. The industry is realising that it’s easier to partner than do things alone,” she added.
How does the reusable cup project work?
Courtesy: Closed Loop Project/Green Queen
When you order a takeaway latte at one of eight participating Starbucks stores in Petaluma, or a Coke at Burger King, for the duration of the trial, you’ll be served the drink in the purple cups branded ‘Sip, Return, Repeat’ for free.
Once you’re done with the beverage, you can return it to one of more than 60 collection points spread across participating businesses and public spaces in Petaluma. You don’t need to wash these, or even remove the straw or lid – that’ll be taken care of at the next step. If you take the cup home, you can also schedule a pickup. The initiative is designed to make reuse as easy as throwing a single-use cup for customers.
After the cups are returned, they’re collected, professionally washed and sanitised, and returned to stores for further use by reusable packaging solutions company Muuse. Any cups found to be unfit for reuse will be recycled locally.
Which companies are involved?
Courtesy: Closed Loop Project
The Petaluma Reusable Cup Project involves over two dozen brands, from global chains to national and local businesses. All of them will serve drinks in these reusable cups while the project is live, until November.
Here is the full list of businesses involved in the pilot:
A marketing campaign will see ads on billboards, bus stops, and other public locations around Petaluma to raise awareness about the initiative. But why was the Californian city chosen in the first place?
The project’s organisers call it “an ideal community” to explore packaging waste solutions, as there has been interest from residents and businesses alike in trialling new systems, and the city government has already been active in sustainability efforts via a phaseout of non-recyclable single-use packaging.
Petaluma is also a sizeable city with a dense geographical layout, including a walkable downtown area with a tight cluster of restaurants and shops, and mixed-use suburban neighbourhoods and rural landscapes. All this creates suitable conditions for testing the reuse system, and working together with local stakeholders, the project has been adapted to local policy and infrastructure.
“We have an amazing, engaged community, and we look forward to assisting the success of this programme, alongside our local restaurants and participating global brands that service our community,” said Petaluma mayor Kevin McDonnell.
Why is this needed?
Courtesy: Closed Loop Project
Plastics is notorious for being one of the most planet-harming materials, with its production linked to 3.4% of all greenhouse gas emissions (more than the entire aviation sector). This is set to double by 2060, and that’s before you take into account the fact that it takes anywhere between 20 to 500 years for plastic to decompose.
In the US, 50 billion single-use cups are bought and disposed of each year, most of which start with restaurants and end up being tossed out at home, work or school. The average lifespan of these cups is less than one hour, according to the Center for the Circular Economy’s research.
Even paper cups are lined with plastic to ensure they don’t absorb liquids or collapse when hot liquid is poured in, but research has shown that this thin coating of plastic can leach chemicals into water and harm aquatic animals, as well as expose humans to microplastics.
Shifting to reusables would help keep billions of cups from landfills, free up land and labour resources, and lower greenhouse gas emissions. “Transitioning to returnable packaging systems is a critical part of reducing single-use packaging waste, and we need to focus on supporting the operations behind it,” said Muuse co-founder and COO BeBrittanythany Gomez.
What are the reusable cups made of?
Courtesy: Closed Loop Project
The purple reusable cups that you’ll encounter in Petaluma over the next three months are made from two types of BPA-free plastics commonly used in the food industry.
Lightweight polypropylene cups will be used for hot drinks (up to 100°C/212°F) and at many locations serving iced or cold beverages. This is the same plastic used for takeout containers, lunchboxes and yoghurt pots. At some locations with soda fountains or iced drinks, the project will use HDPE, which is often used for milk jugs, sodas and food storage boxes.
Using plastic cups to eliminate plastic seems counterintuitive, regardless of whether it’s BPA-free or not. But the organisers explain that while stainless steel is a good material for at-home washing, these cups require much more material and energy to produce, meaning they’ll have to be in circulation for a long time before their environmental benefits really take shape.
Since they can be washed and sanitised like silverware or glassware, reusable plastic cups ultimately require fewer natural resources to produce than single-use cups. Plus, the organisers argue, they’re lighter and easier to transport than metal, ceramic and glass, reducing the number of trucks needed to collect and redistribute these cups.
But while these reusable cups are recyclable, they don’t contain recycled content in the first place. This is due to the limited availability of food-grade recycled plastics.
Will it work?
Courtesy: Starbucks
Starbucks previously aimed to shift from disposables to reusable by 2025, and has tested reusable cups for years now. It first trialled reusable cup rental services via Go Box in 2021. And for years, it has offered customers a discount if they bring their own cup (albeit with a break in this policy during Covid-19).
But the world’s largest coffee chain has admitted that there are hurdles in getting enough people to care and bring their own cups. “The challenge is, especially when you have return bins only in Starbucks, that it’s hard to get all those cups back and really make the environmental impact that’s intended,” Amelia Landers, VP of product experience and innovation at Starbucks, told Fast Company.
“We found that financial incentives don’t always work like we think they will,” added Kate Daly, managing director of the Center for the Circular Economy. “We’ve done tests with even the most simplified return process and cash handouts for return and found that was an insufficient incentive. We know that deposit programs that require somebody to sign up for an app and put their credit card in create a real barrier to people participating in reuse.”
So instead of focusing on incentivisation, the Petaluma Reusable Cup Project is centred on ubiquity and scale-up. “Interoperability is really critical. People are on the go – they shop at one place, they’re disposing of items at other places. Reuse needs to be seen as easy and convenient and not that you have to pay attention to ‘this belongs here and not there’,” explained Daly.
The project’s organisers also intentionally designed the cups to be functional but not desirable. “We want to make sure that people don’t participate in a reuse system by taking home a reusable cup and never returning it,” said Daly. “Because then that’s not a reuse system. That’s a more carbon-intensive single-use system.”
What happens next?
Courtesy: Closed Loop Project
Over the next three months, the initiative will collect baseline data to measure customer participation and the climate impact of offering reusables as the default choice, with an eye on whether the model can viably be scaled.
The analysis will include studying employee opinions about the programme, and the results will be published by the NextGen Consortium. The data can be leveraged by businesses and regulators to help design new reuse systems and draft informed packaging regulations, respectively.
“By testing reuse across an entire city in partnership with key stakeholders from the community and industry, we can scale reuse collaboratively through thoughtful experimentation, building a future where reuse is the norm,” said Daly.
If successful, the scheme could be made permanent, with the consortium happy to donate the cups and return bins after the pilot period if the community wants to keep using them. The trial could further be used as a model for other cities in Sonoma County and beyond.
“Imagine a neighbourhood where all to-go cups are reusable, and returning these cups required no extra steps. By making reusable cups as convenient and accessible as single use, we can offer an alternative for residents when they forget to bring their own cups with them,” said Leslie Lukacs, executive director of Zero Waste Sonoma. “Universal accessibility creates the foundation for a cultural shift towards reuse.”
As part of its Champions Innovate initiative, UEFA has introduced a slew of sustainability measures for the 2024 Champions League final, which includes carbon labelling and plastic-free packaging.
Fans watching Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund battle it out for the 2024 Champions League tomorrow will be eating carbon-labelled food in seaweed packaging, as UEFA – European football’s governing body – aims to amp up its sustainability credentials.
As part of its Champions Innovate initiative (announced in September), all menu boards at Wembley Stadium and food trucks at other Champions Festival sites across London will feature carbon labels from UK startup My Emissions. It’s an extension of the latter’s ongoing partnership with Dutch food delivery giant Just Eat Takeaway.com, a UEFA sponsor since 2021.
“Partnering with UEFA and Just Eat for the Champions League Final is an incredible opportunity to showcase our carbon labelling solution on a global stage,” said My Emissions co-founder Matthew Isaacs, who was selected for Forbes’ 30 Under 30 Europe Class of 2024 alongside his co-founder Nathan Bottomley. “Through Champions Innovate, we’re bringing our solution to one of the largest sporting events in the world.”
UEFA’s Champions Innovate sustainability initiative
Courtesy: My Emissions
Champions Innovate is UEFA’s collaborative programme to address key challenges around the 2024 final beyond just what happens on the pitch. It was created by the UEFA Innovation Hub in collaboration with English governing body the Football Association, the Greater London Authority, and its media house London & Partners.
The goal for the Wembley final (June 1) is to enhance the ESG impact of the competition, according to UEFA, which partnered with three of its sponsors, each of whom worked on different challenges with the selected startups.
PepsiCo – responsible for the six-minute kickoff show – is working on reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of the show, with the long-term goal of organising a net-zero show by 2030. For this, it was teamed up with kinetic energy startup Pavegen, which generates electricity from people’s footsteps. UEFA aims to use this smart flooring tech to power the pre-match show.
Meanwhile, Mastercard is working alongside sports sustainability charity Pledgeball to boost the adoption of the former’s carbon calculator, and create a league for fans who can most effectively reduce their carbon consumption.
Just Eat Takeaway has been working with UEFA to reduce single-use plastic packaging over the last two years, bringing in Notpla’s seaweed packaging at several matches and reusable packaging as part of a circular initiative. Now, its collaboration with My Emissions, which began in September last year for businesses to put emissions information on their in-app delivery menus, has become part of the UEFA Champions Innovate portfolio too.
As part of this, My Emissions will calculate and communicate the carbon footprint of food offerings with a simple A-E rating system on all menus at UEFA sites.
Yesterday, two days before the Champions League final, each startup will demonstrate their pilot at a showcase event at London’s City Hall. An expert jury will then award an additional €45,000 to the competition’s winner.
Carbon labelling a good step, but UEFA’s climate footprint is enlarging
Courtesy: My Emissions
My Emissions’ carbon labels will be displayed across all concession boards at Wembley Stadium, in partnership with caterers Delaware North. “Given the results, Delaware North will use My Emissions to create the carbon ratings for the UEFA Champions League final and season menus into 2025 and beyond,” revealed Andrew Wilkinson, procurement systems manager at the catering company.
All food trucks at the Champions Festival sites – Regents Street, Somerset House, Potters Field and Trafalgar Square – will also sport the labels. They’ve been open to the public since Thursday, and will remain so until Sunday.
Meanwhile, packaging at all these sites will be provided by Notpla, and will include a QR code to a landing page on Just Eat Takeaway’s website. This page will aim to educate fans about the environmental impact of food, providing them with an opportunity to win tickets to matches in next year’s UEFA Champions League.
“We’re able to talk to fans about the carbon footprint of food on a scale that we’ve never achieved before and encourage consumers to make more conscious choices,” said Isaacs. My Emissions has previously also added carbon labels to Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium for World Earth Day, working directly with the same caterer.
“In addition to Wembley Stadium and the Emirates Stadium, Delaware North also cater food at the London Stadium (West Ham), as well as other sites across the UK,” he said. “Due to the success of labelling, Delaware North is already looking to make carbon labelling a permanent fixture on menus at Arsenal and other stadiums for next season.”
Football has a major impact on the climate crisis, with the global industry generating over 30 million tonnes of CO2 per year, about the same as Denmark. UEFA, meanwhile, aims to cut GHG emissions in half by 2030, and reach net zero by 2040. In March, it launched a carbon calculator for football stakeholders to help reduce the sport’s climate impact.
That said, the organisation is also changing the format of its club, competitions from next season, which will see teams play 177 more matches across the three tournaments. It means teams and fans will be flying two billion air miles in 2024-25 (33% higher than 2022-23), equating to 4,000 journeys to the Moon and back. Travel alone will be responsible for over 480,000 tonnes of GHG emissions (a 30% increase).
So while it uses carbon labels and taps into kinetic energy for a one-off final, UEFA’s emissions are continuing to increase, taking it further away from its 2030 goal. Football and its stakeholders need to do a lot more.
Swedish packaging solutions startup Saveggy has raised SEK 20M (€1.76M) to scale up its plastic-free, plant-based coating for fruits and vegetables, starting with cucumbers.
Lund-based Saveggy’s latest funding round of €1.76M was led by Unconventional Ventures, with additional participation from LRF Ventures, Almi Invest GreenTech, and angel investors.
With the twin goal of reducing plastic pollution and food waste, Saveggy will use the funds to produce its edible plant-based coating for fruits and vegetables at an industrial scale. Its first product is called SaveCucumber, which features a thin, invisible layer made from oats and rapeseed oil.
“We believe that freshness, the health of our planet, and the well-being of people should always remain uncompromised,” said co-founder and CEO Arash Fayyazi. “With this financing round, we will launch at industrial scale our first product.”
The pedigree of Fayyazi and his co-founder Vahid Sohrabpour (who is the chief innovation officer) was a major attraction for its lead investor, with Unconventional Ventures general partner Thea Messel saying: “Our investment in Saveggy was driven by the impressive credentials and substantial expertise of its founders. Their innovative technology tackles the significant challenges our food systems face.”
Killing two birds with one coat
Courtesy: Saveggy
Fayyazi and Sohrabpour launched Saveggy in 2020, describing it as a modular, customisable protection technology that can meet the requirements of different fruits and vegetables. According to the UN FAO, 45% of the world’s fruits and vegetables end up going to waste. Globally, we bin a billion household meals every single day, despite 780 million people (just under 10% of the population) facing hunger.
According to the UNEP, food waste contributes to 8-10% of global emissions. Making significant reductions in the amount of food we throw away is crucial to achieving climate and sustainable development goals relating to global heating, food security and biodiversity protection.
Meanwhile, plastic pollution – which relies on petroleum-based products – contributes to 3% of all greenhouse gas emissions (which is higher than the emissions impact of the aviation industry). Single-use plastics like those used in food packaging are devastating to the planet, especially marine life and aquatic systems, which end up back in our food system and present health threats to humans as well.
Plastic packaging is a massive problem for the food industry’s emissions (which account for a third of all emissions). In the US, for example, 63% of all municipal solid waste generated in 2014 comprised packaging materials for food and other purposes – only 35% was recycled or composted. But plastics offer a few key advantages for companies: they’re cheap to produce, they prevent water loss, they keep bacteria out, and they prolong the shelf life of produce.
Clearly, though, better solutions are needed. Saveggy’s offering isn’t a like-for-like substitute for plastic – it’s an altogether packaging-free alternative. It will benefit fruits or vegetables that have edible peels, adding a thin layer of its zero-additive plant-based coating that preserves freshness and shelf life.
Cucumbers, for example, which are 95% water and where moisture retention is crucial for freshness – after all, nobody likes a limp, shrivelled cucumber. Saveggy’s SaveCucumber innovation acts as a protective shield, preserves the water content, and slows down oxidation, extending the shelf life of an uncoated, unpackaged cucumber by three to four times.
Impressing legislators and investors alike
Courtesy: Saveggy
“We are excited and proud to support the team at Saveggy and their innovation in reducing food waste, advancing sustainable agriculture, and proactively complying with upcoming plastic waste regulations,” said LRF Ventures investment director Martin Alexandersson.
In March, the EU agreed to ban single-use plastics for fresh fruit and vegetable packaging (among other applications), in response to the rise in packaging waste in the region. This means all packaging in the bloc must be recyclable by the end of the decade, and starting next year, recyclable packaging will need to be recycled at scale – in 2020, only 38% of plastic packaging waste in the EU ended up being recycled.
Such regulations will raise the stock of startups like Saveggy, which claims to be the only plastic package alternative offering the same shelf life extension, and the only company to be given the all-clear from the EU for edible fruit and produce coatings. And the bloc has recognised its potential too, with the European Research Agency and the European Commission providing it with a €440,000 grant under the Eurostars programme last year.
For its SaveCucumber product, cucumbers are harvested, washed and dried, before being coated with the invisible layer. The company is also working on similar coatings for other produce like bananas, bell peppers and aubergines. Its investors will now look to leverage their supply chain networks to extend Saveggy’s presence to more distributors.
“We were particularly impressed by the founders’ perseverance, having refined their formula multiple times to meet the highest standards,” said Messel. “This unwavering commitment to innovation and sustainability aligns perfectly with our mission as impact investors and made our decision to partner with them clear.”
Saveggy is testing its products with partners, and will enter a market populated by the likes of industry leader Apeel (US), Sufresca (Israel), PolyNatural’s Shel-Life (Chile) and Liquidseal (Netherlands), all of which are making plant-based coatings for fruits and vegetables. Boston-based Foodberry (formerly Incredible Foods), meanwhile, is reverse-engineering fruit skins to make edible packaging for snacks.
US coffee company Keuring, one of the world’s largest coffee pod producers, has introduced K-Rounds, a line of plant-based, fully compostable line of capsules, alongside a new machine, which are slated for launch in 2025.
Next year, Keurig Dr Pepper will roll out the first iteration of its future vision. One of the most popular coffee pod makers, the company is hoping to solve these products’ waste problem by eschewing the terminology entirely. Out with the pods and the capsules, in with the rounds, it seems.
K-Rounds – Keurig’s newest innovation – are free from plastic and aluminium, instead opting for a 100% compostable plant-based cellulose coating that is so thin, it’s invisible. With this, it becomes the latest company tackling coffee and pods’ big climate problems, following in the steps of market leader Nespresso and new startups like Migros.
“Thirty years ago, Keurig changed the way consumers brewed coffee, with the introduction of the K-Cup pod single-serve coffee system,” said Keurig Dr Pepper CEO Bob Gamgort. “Today, we are applying all our expertise to create a revolutionary new system that will redefine how consumers will brew coffee for decades to come.”
Keurig’s K-Rounds blend sustainability with functionality
Courtesy: Keurig
According to emissions intelligence agency DitchCarbon, Keurig scores a measly 8 out of 100 in its sustainability score, which is a framework built upon over 30 emissions metrics. It suggests that the company has a high carbon intensity with room for significant improvements in climate-friendly practices. DitchCarbon suggests that Keurig’s emissions performance is over 27% worse than its peers in the beverage industry.
Clearly, change is needed, and fast. The K-Rounds are Keurig’s way of doing that, with the company expecting the product to become certified backyard-compostable by the time it comes to market. The catch, though, is that these new coffee pods can’t be used in any existing machine – they are only compatible with a new coffee brewer being launched alongside, called Alta.
Alta does have a separate chamber so consumers can still use the old pods, but the new ones – said to be the result of a multi-year innovation – can similarly allow them to brew at both high pressure for espresso-based drinks and low pressure for drip coffee, whether it’s hot or cold. The functionality attributes are key. The K-Rounds come in different quantities and grind sizes, marked with a code from food-safe inks for the Alta to recognise and deliver proper pressure, extraction and flavour. Think single or double espresso, light or dark roasts, and so on.
As for product life, the new coffee pucks are said to be shelf-stable for up to six months, though once opened, they’ll be good for 30 days before their quality begins deteriorating. This is thanks to the coating around the coffee grounds. The cellulose offers some flavour and aroma protection properties, but on its own, it would be insufficient for a long shelf life. This is why Keurig is working on recyclable secondary packaging, which will also have barrier protection.
“We’re working through the dynamics of the secondary packaging materials, exactly how much barrier protection that provides, and then how we package that up in terms of the product counts; the numbers of the pods per secondary pack,” Phil Drapeau, senior vice-president of future coffee systems at Keurig Dr Pepper, told PackagingWorld. “Those will be the numbers and the balances that will need to come together.”
He noted that the company “certainly doesn’t want to go down a secondary packaging path that is not easily recyclable for consumers”, adding that it will eventually conduct a full life-cycle assessment (LCA) to truly measure its climate impact: “We’re a little ways off from LCA. It’s clearly on our radar screen, and we know how important that’s going to be to take a holistic look. The focus started with end of life [of the packaging], to meet consumers’ needs, and then working our way back from there.”
The need for a climate-friendly coffee industry
Courtesy: Keurig
Keurig will begin beta-testing its K-Rounds this autumn, gathering feedback and insight from retailers and coffee partners to refine and optimise the product ahead of its broader market launch for consumers before making it available for broader sale to consumers, potentially in 2025.
“Our ambitious agenda reflects our commitment to providing variety, quality, value, and sustainability to the 45 million North American coffee consumers who currently use Keurig brewers and the millions of potential new households who will discover the benefits of a perfect cup of coffee prepared effortlessly in their home,” said Gamgort.
On average, packaging makes up around 30% of individual coffee capsules, which research suggests contribute to more planet-heating emissions than other brewing methods. A separate study labels coffee pods as among the worst forms of human waste for the climate in terms of long-term damage. This is because, despite many of these products being recyclable, they end up in landfill.
Coffee pods are responsible for 576,000 metric tons of waste produced every year. The issue was highlighted by Nespresso USA’s sustainability head, Anna Marcina, in an interview with NPR last year, where she revealed the business spends over $35M per year on a coffee capsule recycling system – but only 36-37% actually gets recycled in the US.
This is why alternatives like Keurig’s K-Rounds are crucial. Compostable coffee pods are slowly becoming the norm, with many coffee companies producing biodegradable capsules compatible with existing brewers from the likes of Keurig and Nespresso. The latter itself introduced paper-based coffee pods that are home-compostable in 2022.
It’s part of a larger movement to lower the coffee industry’s complicated relationship with climate change. It is amongst the highest-emitting foods globally, and the effects of the climate crisis have put 60% of the world’s coffee species, including arabica, under the threat of extinction. Meanwhile, the amount of land suitable for coffee-growing could be halved before 2050, reducing yields and consequently driving up prices.
So, packaging is just one problem. Coffee the commodity itself is a whole other issue. Some are coming up with climate-resilient ways of producing these beans, such as French crop genetics startup Amaterra, Israeli lab-grown coffee producer Pluri. On the other hand, companies including Northern Wonder, Atomo and Prefer are eschewing coffee altogether, instead using fermentation techniques on crops like carob, chicory and lupin beans, and agricultural sidestreams such as date pits, surplus bread, and spent brewer’s grain to produce beanless coffee alternatives.
Christmas is one of the most joyful and wasteful days of the year – with lots of food and lots of waste producing stats that make for uncomfortable reading. Here’s how you can have a more eco-conscious holiday this year.
Over three days of Christmas festivities, our consumption habits lead to the emission of 650kg of carbon dioxide per person, which is the same weight as 1,000 Christmas puddings. More shockingly, that is 5.5% of a person’s entire annual carbon footprint – no amount of stockings or stuffing is worth that.
It’s a lot of people’s favourite week of the year, starting with Christmas and celebrations with loved ones, and ending with a reflection of the year gone by with the promise of an even better one next. But – at the risk of being a party pooper – if we continue the way we are, there may not be any better years to come.
To that effect, there are some changes we can make that will have a drastic impact on our consumption-based impact on the climate during Yuletide. To futureproof Christmas and our planet, here are some holiday rules.
1) Sustainable physical gifts
Quality over quantity is the name of the game here. Over 60% of Brits receive at least one unwanted gift on Christmas, while 57% of Americans regift or donate presents they never wished for in the first place.
Avoid buying things that won’t get used – one way to do that is to simply ask the recipient what they’d like, and get a well-made, ethical product that will last long and can be passed on to friends, families or charity. You could also look for recycled, refurbished or preloved items, and when it comes to electric equipment, finding an energy-efficient option is the way to go.
Courtesy: Natalia Klenova/Canva
2) Better wrapping solutions
Wrapping paper creates mind-bending amounts of waste. Greenpeace estimates that 1kg of wrapping paper contributes to over 3kg of CO2 emissions mainly due to the coal needed for production, while the amount of wrapping paper thrown away in the UK is long enough to reach the moon.
Consider reusing scrap paper from old magazines or newspapers lying around (which are destined for the bin otherwise). But even better, you could get reusable gift wraps – in the form of old fabrics, boxes, etc. – and tie them with a string instead of plastic tape. If you do get paper wrap, buy recycled and recyclable (or biodegradable if you can), and reuse for future use if you can.
If you’re like me and just can’t wrap to save your life, maybe just eschew the wrapping paper altogether – it’s the thought that counts, after all!
3) Virtual presents and donations
A more climate-conscious solution for gifts and wrappers is to avoid physical presents. Think of alternative gifts, like an experience you could spend together. This also tends to look and be more thoughtful and stands out from other gifts. Plus, it helps sidestep the extra transportation emissions produced by shipping these products.
Moreover, if the recipient feels passionate about a particular cause, consider gifting a donation to a charity of their choice. They might not really need a physical gift on Christmas, but you could help someone who could do with some kindness and help.
4) Say no to plastic
The UK’s plastic packaging amounts to 125,000 tonnes during the holiday period, with over 91% of it (114,000 tonnes) going to landfill instead of being recycled. In terms of weight, the total plastic waste is as heavy as five Statues of Liberty.
So apart from not using plastic gift wrap, reduce plastic wherever you can. Shop local and in zero-waste stores if you can to avoid packaging waste, use virtual Christmas cards, get crackers that only have jokes instead of the wasteful little gifts inside (and make sure to recycle the paper and packaging here), and get eco-friendly Christmas decorations.
Courtesy: The Valeriia Miller Collection/Canva
5) Zero-waste decorations
Speaking of, 12,500 tonnes of Christmas decorations are destined for landfill each year in the UK, which includes nearly 70,000 miles of Christmas lights.
Only get decorations that you can reuse and/or repurpose for other settings, and avoid buying plastic if you can. DIY decorations can be a lot of fun and a good way to spend precious family time. You could dehydrate and reshape orange peels into stars for a compostable Christmas garland, make flowers from leftover tubes of empty toilet paper, or buy secondhand decorations from charity shops to reduce your consumption footprint.
6) Greener trees
An estimated 350 million Christmas trees are sold globally each year. But is it better to get a real one, or an artificial replica? It’s a tricky subject. Real Christmas trees take years to grow, and if they’re cultivated without fertilisers, that’s better than intensively grown variants. Buy local to avoid transport emissions and look for those certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.
An artificial Christmas tree that can be used over multiple years (at least five) is better than buying a new one each year, though there is the use of plastic or metal to contend with. Potted trees are very sustainable, as they can be reused each year, saving emissions from transportation and spreading the carbon footprint of buying them over several years.
What you definitely shouldn’t do is buy a new Christmas tree each year – that takes your climate impact through the roof.
Courtesy: Maria Symchych/Canva
7) Tackling tree disposal
Aside from the impact of growing trees, a bigger problem is how these are disposed of. The UK throws away eight million Christmas trees, generating 12,000 tonnes of waste. If a two-metre-high real Christmas tree ends up in a landfill, it has a carbon footprint of 16kg (while producing the much-more-potent methane too).
Again, replanting potted trees with roots is the best way to go about this, as it avoids disposal altogether. If you need to get rid of your tree, having it chipped and spread around the garden can cut the carbon footprint by up to 80%. But these trees can also help protect coastal areas by supporting sand dunes, turned into compost or recycled – or better yet – donated to local charities for reuse.
8) Lighter lighting
Depending on the type, incandescent light bulbs can use between 25 to 175 watts per strand. Christmas lights add a wonderful touch to the festivities, but they guzzle energy (and, subsequently, carbon and our money) – extravagant outdoor lighting can result in 500kg more carbon produced per household.
Instead, opt for LED light bulbs, which only use 5kg of carbon per household and last years on end. Using a low-energy light bulb for four hours daily can save 30kg of carbon per bulb annually, compared to a standard 100W one. And you could consider getting smaller solar-powered lights for your garden, instead of full-battery versions. And don’t forget to turn those fairy lights off before bedtime.
Courtesy: Getty Images via Canva
9) Travelling lighter
Christmastime always sees an influx of travellers and major crows at airports, railway stations and on the roads. But transportation has a huge impact on the environment, particularly due to its reliance on fossil fuels. So unless you have an electric car, this is something you might want to consider if you’re travelling around this period.
If you can, avoid air travel – especially domestically (as that is responsible for the highest share of transport emissions). Use public transport like trains if possible, and if you must use a car, see if you can share a ride with fellow travellers, as that will hugely reduce your pollution and your contribution to climate change.
10) Avoid food waste
In the UK alone, 54 million excess plates of food are thrown away on Christmas – that’s enough to feed dinner to 80% of the country’s population. And while the US already wastes about 30-40% of its food supply, the USDA predicts this goes up by 20% during the holidays.
It’s crucial to not waste food at all – let alone during Christmas. While it’s easy to go overboard with the festive spirit, buy and make only as much food as you need: if you do need a lot of variety, make smaller quantities and plan your menu so you can use your ingredients in multiple dishes. If you have food left over, repurpose it into new dishes post-Christmas, or donate to people in need.
As for produce, you can get creative and use every part of the vegetable. Look for recipes that utilise scraps, and leave the peel on where you can. If you must throw something away, compost it.
11) Zero-waste cocktails
Courtesy: Canva
Brits drink 250 million pints of beer over the holiday period, while Americans drink 27% more during the festive season versus the rest of the year. That’s a lot of booze, but it’s also a lot of waste. There’s the packaging: in the US, 70% of wine bottles end up in landfill, while half of all alcohol containers are thrown away and not recycled in the UK. But then there’s the production aspect itself: a 500ml bottle of beer uses around 148 litres of water, while a single 125ml glass of wine needs 110 litres.
To drink more mindfully (for both you and the planet), choose sustainable spirits and/or those that come in recycled and recyclable packaging. Dispose of the leftover bottles and cans in a planet-friendly way. As for what you’re drinking, opt for zero-waste cocktails – we have a handy recipe guide for you here.
12) More mindful cooking practices
There are multiple things you can do to lower your cooking impact. For example, only pre-heat the oven for as long as it needs, and don’t leave it turned on after the food is done to keep it heated. You can consider steam-cooking vegetables like Brussels sprouts, broccoli, etc., as they can be prepared at the same time and end up using less energy.
Moreover, instead of serving people individually, let them help themselves to as much as they need – anything that’s on the plate that isn’t eaten usually goes in the bin, but you can avoid that altogether by only portioning out as much as you need.
Bonus: Make your Christmas dinner vegan
Source: Calyx | Graphic by Green Queen Media
Perhaps the most impactful thing you can do on Christmas is change what’s on your plate. Meat is the standard centrepiece in a majority of households, with sides that include dairy and meat alongside vegetables, and desserts containing dairy too. But meat and dairy have a significantly higher impact on the planet than plant-based food – vegan diets can reduce emissions, water pollution and land use by 75%.
Green Queen partnered with climate data startup Calyx to measure the climate footprint of an average Christmas dinner, versus one with vegan alternatives. Across the board, the plant-based dishes had an equal or higher eco-score, especially with meat. A roast turkey with cranberry sauce had a score of D+, compared to a nut load with cranberry sauce, which had a B rating. Similarly, a roast ham with gravy had a D score, with a roasted butternut squash with mushroom gravy ranking much higher at A-.
There are legions of things you can do to have a more sustainable Christmas and celebrate it with as much merriment as usual – food, though, should be top of the list.
What does the future look like for food tech? French consultancy DigitalFoodLab has released its annual State of FoodTech Trends report for 2024, distilling 28 directions in six ‘mega-trends’, including sustainable proteins, food is medicine and automation.
Food tech is the future of food. That’s what DigitalFoodLab, a French strategy consultancy counting over 50 clients including the likes of Nestlé and Danone, wants you to know.
In the fourth edition of its annual State of FoodTech Trends report, the insights firm has identified 28 key things to look out for in food tech next year and beyond – divided into six broad categories – and outlines how long each will take to reach a point of maturity.
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
The report points out that 2024 will be an exciting yet complicated time for food tech, with an uncommonly large number of trends in the ‘disillusion’ phase, and many in the ‘excitement’ stage paving the way for disillusion. This has resulted in food trends being scattered all around a curve measuring expectations against time – tracking how a new tech becomes a trend, reaches a peak of excitement, which fades into disillusionment before its challenges are addressed, after which it becomes a disruptor seen by every observer.
Speaking to Green Queen, Digitalfoodlab co-founder Matthieu Vincent said he was most surprised at the extremes in many ecosystems, “we both super hyped up startups while at the same time, quite a lot of the companies in the space are in the disillusionment stage, which creates a strange situation where one part of the foodtech ecosystem is thriving while many startups are struggling to avoid bankruptcy.”
He added that he is most sceptical about the alternative protein trend because he has doubts about “the ability of many companies to sustain the hype.” While he is bullish on the space overall, “the problem is in the definition of ‘long-term’. We think most companies have overpromised on their ability to reach mass production fast so a period of reckoning may be coming where we’ll see which startups have the technology and the financial means to deliver in time to satisfy investors.”
Vincent noted that the trends have geographical specificities too. “In the report, trends are mapped from a global perspective, but obviously their impact and the way they will reach different markets will be hugely different. Let’s take the healthy ageing trend – if we broaden the topic to ‘healthy ingredients, this trend is far more advanced in Asia where there are already many products on the market (and regulation that is pushing the space forward, for example in China.”
So what does DigitalFoodLab predict the future of food tech to be? Here are the six mega-trends shaping the industry in 2024.
Food tech trend #1: The resilient farm
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
Agtech is a critical component of the food tech ecosystem. “Multiple trends drive us toward a more sustainable and resilient farm: the growing appetite for locally grown foods, fewer farmers and workers, energy costs, climate change concerns, notably regarding arable land, and the convergence of technology and farming,” the report states.
This trend is going in two directions: existing farms are being augmented as more intelligent and automated, and between urban, indoor and next-gen farms, the former is overtaking the latter in terms of hype, investments and acquisitions.
Precision farming is one of the six food trends representing the future of agriculture. A farm management concept based on data measurement and analysis, it’s a well-established ecosystem that seeks to “increase food production by improving in-farm decision-making, product traceability and quality”. While one of the oldest agtech ecosystems, it’s yet to mature, with universal access to software and tools a key challenge.
Farm robotics, meanwhile, are the first step towards autonomous agriculture, featuring AI and machine learning tech. Out of the disillusionment stage, its growth is linked to a reduced pool of skilled workers and sustainability (cutting the amount of required inputs). There’s also indoor and urban farming, which is facing a reckoning thanks in part to the energy crisis, but this ecosystem is expected to grow around business models spotlighting tech over farm operators.
In terms of insects for animal feed, there’s a growing disillusionment as industrial facilities are more complicated to run than previously thought, while a consolidation based on the type of insects startups choose is likely. One of the new trends this year (which hasn’t appeared in DigitalFoodLab’s previous reports) is bio inputs, a field where companies are developing a new generation of organic and more efficient fertilisers. It’s still in its infancy, but is being boosted by the energy crisis and rising costs of fertilisers.
The final trend (and another new one) for the resilient farm is future crops, which involve improving seed quality for disease resistance, increased yields, flowering control, nutritional enhancement and longer life post-harvest. Genetic hybridisation (crossing) and gene editing are two of the most common technologies used by startups here.
Food tech trend #2: Sustainable proteins
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
Alternative proteins have been on the rise for a while now, and for good reason. They’re much more environmentally friendly and present health benefits over animal-derived foods – and there’s the animal welfare aspect too. Even with the recent sales decline of plant-based meat, the category as a whole has been gaining traction.
There are five key directions part of the sustainable protein segment, with scale, costs, consumer acceptance and regulatory approval as the main hurdles to overcome, along with financing the industrialisation of these products. DigitalFoodLab proposes distributed production (bioreactors in the cloud, alluding to the cloud computing sector) as a potential solution.
The first trend here, of course, is plant-based protein. This trend has gone backwards from the ‘rising stars’ (overcoming disillusionment) stage to between the excitement and disillusionment phases. “We wrongly and collectively believed that plant-based products and alternative proteins, as a whole, were ready for mass adoption,” the report notes. Consumer concerns around health, taste and price are the key deterrents, but new facilities, cleaner labels and industry collaboration are markers of better things to come.
Next up is cellular agriculture – in this case, cultivated proteins – which is still in its infancy and at least three to five years away from being market-ready (apart from the very limited availability of cell-cultured meat in the US and Singapore). Mass adoption is much further away, and the key challenges (excluding regulatory approval) are lower costs, serum-free formulations, stable cell lines, better taste and texture, and scaling production. Large facilities are already underway, with several set to be operational by 2025.
Then there’s what’s known as the third pillar of alt-protein: fermentation. Precision fermentation – like cell cultivation – is hitting its peak in the excitement stage, with most companies focused on recreating dairy proteins by inserting the genetic code of the desired protein in a microorganism before fermentation. Regulatory and scale-up barriers (especially for casein) are key here, with price parity (and how to transition farmers effectively once that happens) also important.
Biomass fermentation, meanwhile, is also at this peak, with startups either using microbes that can produce proteins in an uncontrolled environment or using carbon dioxide as feed to create protein products. This faces similar challenges, notably regulatory clearance and flavourful products. Molecular farming – which involves genetically modifying plants to become bioreactors producing proteins – is highly promising and more scalable than precision fermentation or cell cultivation, but it’s still in an experimental stage, with the first large-scale demonstrations expected in the next two to three years.
Food tech trend #3: Instant retail
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
This trend encapsulates all innovations enabling consumers to access food quickly and efficiently from their screens, in one click, a concept that can be extended to anti-food-waste platforms, ethnic marketplaces, autonomous stores and restaurant delivery.
There are four trends here, all out of the hype phase. Smart stores, still approaching this stage, entail upstream concepts (warehouse automation), on-shelf tech (checkout-free stores) and complete automation. The adoption is very slow here, with large companies like Amazon leading the way, and the increasing need for more workers may speed this up.
Quick commerce – involving deliveries in usually less than 30 minutes from small warehouses – is facing loads of challenges, including zoning limitations and high labour costs. “If things move fast in FoodTech, nothing came close to the speed at which quick commerce startups went to the moon and are now crashing,” DigitalFoodLab noted, adding that disruption can still happen thanks to market consolidation and via delivery robots rather than the Q commerce we know today.
New retailers are reinventing grocery shopping from the ground up, considering online channels as their only focus. Some of the giants here offer identical products to incumbent retailers, but promise to do better, while smaller innovators are disrupting the market with subscriptions, reusable packaging, ‘ugly’ produce or damaged products.
The most mature trend in this category is restaurant delivery. Here, consultation is still underway, while regulations of driver status are no longer a priority outside Europe. These companies have also entered grocery delivery, demonstrating a viable profitability path, and they’re increasingly essential to foodservice.
Food tech trend #4: Food as medicine
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
Food as medicine has been evolving for some time now – we’ve written extensively about it too. This trend is the new avatar of DigitalFoodLab’s previous ‘food personalisation’ direction, with the convergence of health and food at the heart of things. Two of the key pillars – especially in the US – are produce prescription programmes and medically tailored meals.
These initiatives can have a “potentially massive impact”, but there are very few players. One of the sub-trends here is food coaching, “a move from services to devices”, encompassing health testing apps and diet and nutrition platforms. This is in the disillusionment stage at present, with more scientific rigour needed to reach a wider audience.
Healthy ageing includes ingredients that help us live longer. One aspect is adding new ingredients like genetically modified produce or breast-milk-derived innovations to existing foods, while the other category seeks to reduce long-term damage caused by processed foods. This segment – a new trend – is approaching the excitement phase.
One that’s far away is personalised food – supplements or meals customised for people based on test results, and evolutive micronutrition to print supplements for home or office use. Low adaptability is a key concern for the former, while high costs and unconvincing tech are currently discouraging consumers from the latter.
Food tech trend #5: Automation
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
The food automation sector is in limbo. “For many years, startups have used robotic arms and other complicated and costly technologies to replicate humans’ actions, but it is not working,” the report said. Now, the new goal is to scale down factories to the size of a restaurant instead of emulating chefs with robotic arms.
There are four trends at play here, with none at the hype stage. Cloud kitchens and virtual restaurants (“primarily a marketing expert that creates restaurant brands and menus”) are approaching the end of the disillusionment phase. Virtual restaurants are becoming more digital and offering their brands as a sales tool for restaurants, but the sector is compounded by influencer-owned brands. While the boom isn’t over, the report predicted that there will be a phase of rationalisation with concentration in the hands of a handful of players.
Moving from hype to disillusionment, cooking robots can include collaborative robots that replace employees for complex tasks, automated eateries, and automated kiosks and vending machines. DigitalFoodLab noted: “They don’t solve a real-world problem and are far from becoming profitable: what is the point of using a $25,000 robotic arm to serve coffee?” New solutions focus on less expensive robots (mechanical tools, really) and adapting them to humans.
Delivery robots became prominent after the pandemic, but were less successful than anticipated, with several down rounds, layoffs and shutdowns. It will take a bit of time to see robots and drones used in our daily lives at scale. 3D printing, on the other hand, is one futuristic tech finally finding its use. A new trend on the list, it’s allowing companies to display greater creativity and better define the texture or ingredients used in complex products like meat and seafood alternatives.
Food tech trend #6: The smart supply chain
Courtesy: DigitalFoodLab
The final category of food tech trends for 2024 relates to smart supply chains, driven by the fight against food waste as well as digitalisation to reduce labour costs and promote standardisation.
Digital restaurant services – facilitating booking, online order management, payment and HR management – represent the most mature trend here, with acquisitions in this space expected to continue as services become more integrated. Smart packaging is in its disillusionment stage, underlined by underinvestment despite technologies working to cut food waste, improve shelf life, and enhance safety. The real disruption may come from protective layers (which keep moisture and oxygen out) instead of the packaging itself.
Reusable packaging (a new trend separated from the smart packaging direction) involves startups managing reusable packs or developing a network of collectors combined with digital tags. Regulation is crucial here, with single-use plastic bans driving interest in these solutions.
Another new trend, food waste management techniques are being created across the supply chain – spanning foodservice, unsold food, on-shelf solutions and home appliances – with the focus being shifted from discounting to software solutions, and now expected to evolve towards retail procurement management, with food waste and merging with B2B marketplaces in mind.
These B2B marketplaces are the third new trend, with startups digitalising the supplier-store relationship through mobile apps and integrated messaging systems. There are multiple types of players here, and competition from prominent companies adds a degree of challenge. Finally, the digital supply chain is focusing on carbon counting and decarbonisation, with the main challenge involving data about livestock and agricultural production. Startups are also developing carbon credit trading platforms, while others help inform consumers about their carbon footprint through food.
It’s an extensive list with loads of innovations, potential and challenges – how will these food tech trends pan out over 2024? We’ll have to wait and watch (this space).
New York-based sustainability research firm HowGood has partnered with Majid Al Futtaim, which operates Carrefour in the UAE, to bring the former’s climate impact labels to five of the French retail giant’s stores in Dubai, including one at COP28. HowGood’s stamp will be digitally displayed on over 2,500 food products.
HowGood, the US research agency that boasts the largest ingredient and product sustainability database (covering over 33,000 ingredients), has teamed up with Majid Al Futtaim – which operates Carrefour stores in the UAE – and SES-imagotag (a digital solutions provider for physical commerce) to bring climate impact labels to more than 2,500 food items.
The collaboration will see HowGood’s climate impact labels appear on product packaging at five Carrefour Dubai locations: Mall of the Emirates, City Centre Deira, City Centre Mirdif, Dubai International Airport’s Terminal 3, and its store at COP28 (situated at the Blue Zone in Expo City). It will make Carrefour the only retailer in the region to transparently disclose the sustainability ratings of its products.
How HowGood’s climate labels will work at Carrefour
Courtesy: HowGood
Consumers will now be able to identify the climate and social impacts of the food they buy via three labels provided by HowGood, which include information on carbon footprints and comprehensive sustainability credentials. These labels will utilise SES-imagotag’s digital shelf edge tags, which enable “seamless visibility” for consumers to help them make purchasing decisions.
The first label, Product Carbon Footprint, is a measure of the greenhouse gas emissions of the food item from cradle to shelf. The second, the Comprehensive HowGood Sustainability Rating, ranks products based on their socio-environmental impact via a percentile system. If a food has the ‘Best’ rating, it means the product has better social and climate credentials than 95% of all others assessed. ‘Great’ indicates 85% and ‘Good’ 70%.
These ratings are part of Carrefour’s Choose Better programme as well, which is launching at COP28. It aims to “educate, empower and reward customers” for making better-for-you and eco-friendly choices accessible and affordable. The scheme is built on three pillars – For You, For the Planet, and For Communities – highlighting the health, environment and social focus points. It’s a pertinent campaign, given that 83% of the Emirati population doesn’t eat its daily recommended servings of five fruits and vegetables.
Courtesy: Majid Al Futtaim
“Our launch of the Choose Better programme is not only a testament to our commitment to sustainability, it also aligns with our purpose to help customers shop smarter and live better by helping them make healthier, more sustainable shopping choices,” said Sheila Chaiban, CMO at Majid Al Futtaim. Carrefour itself claimed to have reduced its emissions by 36% in 2019 and intends to cut them by a further 30% by 2030 and 55% by 2040 (from a 2019 baseline).
The third HowGood label available at Carrefour stores is called Product Sustainability Attributes, which digs deeper into additional climate concerns. This helps shoppers identify which products use less water (Water Smart), have lower GHG emissions (Climate Friendly), comprise simpler formulations with a maximum of seven or fewer ingredients (Clean Label), are made with ingredients not dependent on commercial or industrial processing (Minimally Processed), and respect workers’ rights (Fair Labor).
Catering to consumer trends and government plans
Courtesy: Majid Al Futtaim
HowGood says the three labels bring transparency to multiple areas of concern surrounding the food industry and its impact on the planet. Food systems are responsible for a third of all global emissions, with meat accounting for 60% of these. As the UAE hosts the UN climate summit in its Year of Sustainability, the focus on food and its impact on the climate is more pronounced than ever before – especially given that the UAE wastes roughly 38% of all food produced daily, while food imports make up 90% of its supply and 6% of its population remains undernourished.
At the Future Food Forum in Dubai in September, a panel discussed consumers’ rising interest in plant-based and flexitarian diets in the country – 44% of its residents are open to substituting meat and dairy with vegan alternatives. And a YouGov poll last month revealed that 55% of Emirati citizens identify as flexitarian (including pescetarians), vegetarian or vegan.
That third HowGood label also ties in with what people are looking for in the country. For flexitarians and vegetarians, health is the topmost priority (58% and 59% chose it, respectively) when it comes to food choices, according to the YouGov survey. That focus on clean-label ingredients and minimal processing will appeal to this cohort, but there’s a broader precedent as well: global ingredients manufacturer Ingredion has previously found that 50% of the country’s citizens are prioritising their food and drink’s nutritional content and naturalness.
Courtesy: YouGov
These labels have proven to be influencing consumer purchases. HowGood partnered with SES-imagotag in London recently, and the use of its attributes increased product sales by 25.8% on average. The Fair Labor attribute brought a rise of 45.1%.
It’s another chapter in what will be the UN’s first food-focused climate summit, where the FAO is set to introduce a roadmap for the agri-food sector to align to the 1.5°C goal, which COP28 president (and head of UAE national oil company Adnoc) Dr Sultan Al Jaber claims is still possible – despite recent scientific reports saying otherwise. In fact, one study has found that the world is currently on track for 3°C warming above pre-industrial levels, amplifying the importance of striking international climate deals at COP28.
“Food brands and retailers have an immense opportunity to drive transparency and empower more sustainable decision-making,” said HowGood chief innovation officer Ethan Soloviev. “Our launch at COP28 will be a clear signal of where the future of retail is headed with regard to sustainability.”
Cigarette-style warnings about the impact of climate change on food can cut meat consumption, according to a study by Durham University. Researchers found that adding pictorial climate warning labels deterred Brits from choosing meat dishes by 7.4 percentage points, and participants aren’t be opposed to policies mandating such labels.
‘Smoking kills.’ It’s a ubiquitous label found on cigarette and tobacco packaging, a mandatory label designed to deter people from smoking, without actually banning the act. Can governments do the same for meat consumption, which also kills?
That’s what researchers are Durham University ventured to find out in a UK-wide study published last month in the peer-reviewed journal Appetite. Surveying 1,001 Brits, the study aimed to find whether providing pictorial labels about the impact of meat-eating on climate change, health and pandemics on menus can influence people’s decisions to opt for a meat dish.
Meat consumption has been linked to increased risks of obesity, heart disease and certain types of cancer, while the industry has been found to be taking inadequate steps to prevent future zootonic pandemics. Meanwhile, meat’s impact on climate change has been well-documented. Reserach has shown that vegan diets can reduce emissions, land use and water pollution by 75% compared to meat-rich diets, and that replacing half of our meat and dairy consumption can halt deforestation and double climate benefits.
How the packaging of cigarettes can inform climate labelling
Courtesy: Durham University
The study split participants into four groups and asked them to imagine they were in a university canteen. Each group had to choose from four hot dishes – including burgers, curries, burritos, lasagna, quiche and pasta bake – which were meat-based, fish-based, vegetarian and vegan.
For one group, the meat option came labelled with “Eating meat contributes to poor health”, accompanied by a picture of a person getting a heart attack. Another group had the label “Eating meat contributes to climate change” alongside a picture depicting deforestation, while the third group placed the meat option alongside “Eating meat contributes to pandemics”, showcasing caged animals.
The other group had no such labels surrounding the meat option – here, people chose meat 64% of the time. But when looking at the different labels, all represented a reduction in opting for meat, with the pandemic warning being the most effective, dropping the number of people choosing meat to 54% (a 10-point decline). The health warning, meanwhile, saw an 8.8-point decrease, while the climate change label affected a 7.4-point reduction.
This is in line with a recent Smart Protein survey of 750 UK consumers by ProVeg International, which found that health was the top motivating factor for Brits to reduce meat and dairy consumption, with 48% citing it. This was followed by environmental reasons (29%) and animal welfare (25%).
Similarly, a 1,000-person survey by Bryant Reserach, ProVeg and Plant Futures last month revealed that health benefits are the number one reason for Brits to eat plant-based meat (39%), followed by taste and texture (36%) and environmental benefits (17%).
The UK’s climate fight
Courtesy: Ashbury
Despite the more pronounced effect of the health labels, attitudes towards mandating such labels were flipped, with participants indicating they aren’t opposed to mandatory cigarette-style climate labels on food, but are less supportive of the health and pandemic labels.
This is key, since meat reduction needs to be a priority for the UK. According to a recent YouGov poll, 72% of its citizens classify themselves as meat-eaters. The country’s Climate Change Committee, which advises the government on net-zero goals, has recommended a 20% reduction in meat and dairy consumption by 2030. But in June, the CCC said the UK’s pace of action to reduce emissions by 68% by 2030 from a 1990 benchmark is “worryingly slow”.
Last month, ONS data revealed that meat and dairy consumption in the UK is at its lowest since records began in 1974. But the intake of fruits and vegetables has also dropped. And in September, UK prime minister Rishi Sunak U-turned on the country’s climate commitments, facing backlash after pushing back the deadline for gas and diesel car bans from 2030. Sunak said he remained committed to sticking to the UK’s net-zero goal for 2050 in a more pragmatic and realistic manner, although did not outline how he would do so.
Meanwhile, analysis by GFI Europe in August found that the UK needs to invest £390M in alternative proteins between 2025 and 2030 to avoid losing momentum to other countries.
“Reaching net zero is a priority for the nation and the planet,” said study lead Jack Hughes. “As warning labels have already been shown to reduce smoking as well as drinking of sugary drinks and alcohol, using a warning label on meat-containing products could help us achieve this if introduced as national policy.”
Hughes told TIME that adding these climate labels could actually get the UK to reach about halfway towards its target. He compared it to a similar study in 2021 in the US, which had text-only labels. That study didn’t find any significant impact, and Hughes suggested it could be due to cultural differences, but because of the addition of images and citations to the sources of information too.
A growing body of evidence
Courtesy: Durham University
“It is not up to me to speculate or recommend how companies and restaurants use this research,” Hughes told TIME. “If these were to be implemented in the real world, what our research shows is that putting these warning labels alongside meat options when people are making decisions might be an effective way to reduce the amount of meat people are choosing.”
And there is precedent in the real world, as evidenced by the partnership between catering company Chartwells and research firm HowGood, which last week revealed that there has been an increase in student demand for climate-friendly meals in US universities after the introduction of eco labels.
Other studies that have explored the efficacy of climate labels include one from the Food Quality and Preference journal earlier this year, which found that 63% of Brits would be deterred from buying meat if it had an eco score in the red and 52% would consider buying meat alternatives if they had a better rating (though the sample size was only 255). A wider-ranging analysis by CarbonTrust, compiling data from three YouGov polls totalling over 10,000 respondents from eight countries (including the UK), revealed that two-thirds of respondents find carbon labelling a good idea.
Milica Vasiljevic, a senior author of the study, said: “We already know that eating a lot of meat, especially red and processed meat, is bad for your health and that it contributes to deaths from pollution and climate change. Adding warning labels to meat products could be one way to reduce these risks to health and the environment.”
In a world packed with celebrity spirits, some are spotlighting sustainability with innovative plant-based alcohol offerings, from zero-waste to zero-ABV. Here are three of our just-launched faves.
If it feels like there are way too many celebrity-backed or -owned alcohol brands, that’s because there are. There’s practically a new one every month. Just this year, we’ve seen Blake Lively launch Betty Booze, Jennifer Lopez unveil Delola, Jason Momoa introduce Meili, Matthew McConaughey partner with his wife for Pantalones, and Michael Bublé expand his Christmas empire with Fraser & Thompson.
It’s an oversaturated market, but some are cutting through the noise to offer more sustainable booze for fans, given it’s an industry linked to “water and food insecurity, environmental degradation, pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and greenwashing”, according to one report.
It’s not just you that alcohol leaves thirsty – liquor itself is thirsty: a 500ml bottle of beer uses around 148 litres of water, while a single 125ml glass of wine needs 110 litres. An average person uses around 142 litres of water a day, to put that into some context.
There’s also a waste problem. In the US, 70% of wine bottles end up in landfill, while half of all alcohol containers are thrown away and not recycled in the UK. Meanwhile, for every litre of tequila, about 5kg of pulp and 10-15kg of acidic waste are left over, both of which can contaminate soil and water supplies in production regions.
So as we push towards a more sustainable and ethical food system, here are three celebrity-led alcohol brands launched just this year that pull focus on these very themes.
Woody Harrelson: Holistic Spirits Co.
Courtesy: Holistic Spirits Co.
Described as the world’s first plant-powered spirits company, Now You See Me actor Woody Harrelson teamed up with health and wellness entrepreneur Amy Holmwood to launch Holistic Spirits Co.
The brand debuted gin and vodka flavoured with botanicals and positioned as superfood-containing, better-for-you drinks. “No alcohol will ever be healthy, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be more conscious of what we’re putting in our bodies while we enjoy spirits, in whatever setting that may be,” says Holmwood.
The Origen vodka’s base spirit is made from organic white wheat, while the Harmony gin is made from organic corn, and both are infused with artichoke leaves, elderberries, green tea leaves, and muscadine grapes. The latter additionally makes use of botanicals like juniper berries, coriander seed, hyssop, lemon peel, lime peel, angelica root and orris root. At 35% ABV, neither spirit has any artificial colours and flavourings or added sugars.
“For years I’ve wondered who was going to come along and put my favourite superfoods into spirits,” says Harrelson a long-time vegan and star of nature documentaries like Kiss the Ground and its forthcoming sequel. He has also invested in plant-based meat and seafood brands Wicked Kitchen, Abbot’s Butcher and Good Catch. “I think it’s a marvellous thing that Amy came up with, and I admire her sense of purpose. It was a no-brainer to get involved from the start.” (Holmes, who has degrees in biotech and nutrition, developed the recipe in 2022.)
Both the spirits are distilled using what the company describes are “sustainable initiatives and green, cutting-edge” techniques. Moreover, the Holistic Spirits Co. has been accepted into the Positive Luxury Butterfly Accelerator Programme, which helps innovative sustainable businesses scale up through financial aid and tailored support.
Lewis Hamilton: Almave
Courtesy: Almave
Another vegan celebrity with a strong investor portfolio, Formula One legend Lewis Hamilton teamed up with Montelobos Mezcal and Alma Finca maker Casa Lumbre to unveil a blue agave tequila – with a non-alcoholic twist.
Hamilton, whose investments include the popular plant-based fast-food chain Neat Burger and Chilean alt-protein startup NotCo, launched Almave with Casa Lumre co-founder Iván Saldaña to cater to the growing number of teetotal and sober-curious youth consumers. In the UK, for example, over a quarter of 16- to 25-year-olds are teetotallers, while the number of college-age Americans who don’t drink has risen from 20% to 28% in the last decade.
Almave claims to be the only company to be using blue agave to make alcohol-free tequila. It’s made using the same raw materials and in the same part of Mexico, but eschews the fermentation process that turns the liquid into alcohol. For this reason, Almave’s liquor can’t legally be called tequila, and is instead referred to as a blue-agave spirit (much like labelling conventions prohibit alt-milk manufacturers from using dairy-related terms).
Regardless, the company promises the “same distinct agave taste and character”, making a product “true to the land, true to the plant”. There are two variants: the Almave Ámbar, which boasts notes of roasted blue agave, sweet caramel and toasted wood, and the Almave Blanco, which is characterised by balanced sweetness and acidity.
Emma Watson: Renais Gin
Courtesy: Renais Gin
Ever the goody-two-shoes, Hermoine has stayed true to her dentist parents with a spirit that’s better for your teeth than others. It also happens to be better for the planet.
But it’s not just her fictional parents she’s paying homage to. Emma Watson’s family has deep ties to French winemaking, and her father owns an award-winning wine company called Domaine Watson. While she may have been absent from our screens for a few years (rumour has it she’ll be back soon), Watson has been busy cooking (sorry, distilling) up a gin brand with her brother, Alex. The twist, as is standard with gin, is that made from grapes, not grains.
Renais Gin valorises the winemaking sidestream by upcycling byproducts – French pressed wine grape skins and lees – some of which come from the Watson family vineyard. These are mixed with a distillate made from Kimmeridgian stone (the soil type of the Chablis terroir), pressed Grand Cru grapes and a whole host of botanicals: linden flowers, cubeb berries, coriander seeds, acacia honey, lemon peel, angelica roots, lime slices, rock salt and juniper.
The company is certified as carbon-neutral by ClimatePartner, which evaluates the entire supply chain to “cut out as much carbon as possible, and offset the remainder through humanitarian and ecological initiatives”. Offsetting programmes aren’t always the best idea, though, as the company acknowledges. “We know we’re not perfect, but are committed to offsetting our footprint while working in the background to minimise our impact.”
Renais Gin uses solar-powered stills and tackles the packaging problem too, partnering with the Magical Mushroom Company to create biodegradable mushroom packaging.
Earthshot Prize-winning British startup Notpla’s seaweed-based packaging has become the ‘first and only’ material recognised as plastic-free by a European Union country, following a nine-month verification process under the EU’s Single-Use Plastics Directive (SUPD) by the Dutch government.
In July of this year, the Netherlands imposed a plastic tax on disposable plastic food containers, which mandates customers to pay 25 cents for food packaging for takeout and delivery purposes. The move was aimed at encouraging consumers to reduce their consumption.
It was part of the Netherlands’ strict drive against the single-use plastic industry, whose self-regulated and unsubstantiated claims were unsatisfactory. According to Notpla, the EU defines plastic as a material containing polymers that are chemically modified and/or synthetically polymerised, with the SUPD cracking down on these harmful materials with country-specific laws to prevent single-use plastics, require mandatory labelling, or implement taxes on the use of these materials – as the Dutch government has done in alignment with the Bloc’s regulation.
The Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate (ILT) – the Netherlands’ environmental body – tested thousands of material solutions and classified them as plastic, including those claiming to be plastic-free, like aqueous dispersion coating (which contains microplastics).
But Notpla, which makes biobased seaweed-based packaging, has now become the first material to be recognised as truly plastic-free, following a nine-month process by the ILT. The result was independently investigated by global sustainability firm Eunomia Research & Consulting.
Courtesy: Notpla Impact Report 2022
Shaping up a more sustainable foodservice sector
The British startup uses natural extracts found in seaweed and doesn’t make any chemical modifications, which enables it to leverage the natural polymers to provide the grease and moisture resistance needed by food boxes to perform their function, and crucially, to bypass fossil-fuel-derived polymers.
The startup says that conventional containers and bioplastic alternatives can contain petrol-based coatings that “stick around forever” or release harmful toxins, its seaweed- and plant-coated solution can be recycled with existing paper streams or composted at home, “just like a fruit peel”.
Speaking about the milestone recognition from the Dutch government, Notpla co-founder Pierre-Yves Paslier said: “This sets Notpla apart and aligns perfectly with our mission to reduce society’s dependence on plastic. We look forward to helping Dutch restaurant owners meet their plastic reduction goals.”
Notpla, which was one of the winners of the Prince William-led Earthshot Prize in 2022, says its plastic-free food containers can prevent 15 million single-use plastic packaging units from being produced in the Netherlands (the company claims its solutions have diverted 3.5 million pieces of single-use plastic from entering the environment across all its markets). Companies using Notpla packaging would no longer need to charge consumers for the plastic tax, making it a win-win for both consumers and businesses alike.
The seaweed packaging will also help the catering industry reach its plastic reduction goals and ensure single-use items can still be used – for businesses that can’t implement reuse schemes due to hygiene or other factors, this is still a plastic-free solution.
Courtesy: Notpla
A distribution partnership and other plastic-free applications
The startup, which has raised over £10M in funding, has entered a strategic partnership with Dutch manufacturer Conpax to produce and distribute plastic-free food packaging throughout Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. Foodservice operators and other businesses will be able to buy Notpla’s food packaging starting in January, helping them achieve and promote their eco goals.
Conpax director Roy Suiskens said the collaboration will ensure the widespread availability of the seaweed-coated foldable cartons in the Benelux region. “From our own facilities in the Netherlands, we will design, manufacture and supply new sustainable single-use products made from Notpla-coated board and distribute this to the Benelux market who are calling out for this exact solution,” he explained.
Apart from its food packaging solution – which has been previously trialled by food delivery service Just Eat in the UK – Notpla has a host of plastic-free solutions for various applications. Its first flagship was Ooho, an edible packaging solution for on-the-go hydration during sporting events.
Its current product portfolio also includes a laundry sachet, ocean paper, and food oil pipettes, while it has developed prototypes or is working on energy gel pods, spice and bath oil sachets, lube and sunscreen pipettes, toothpaste and skincare pearls, as well as rigid cosmetics and product shells and cutlery.
Other companies working on plastic-free materials meant to replace plastic packaging include US-based Sway, London-based Flexsea and
Consumers are more focused on personal and planetary health than ever before, governments are clamping down on greenwashing, and businesses are offering services to cut climate impacts and provide better labelling – are labels like Nutri-Score and Eco-score the future of food packaging?
Two weeks ago, Oatly launched a new campaign challenging the dairy industry to showcase its climate footprint. While the company itself has been doing this for a few years now, this felt a little different. It’s one of the world’s largest oat milk companies directly calling out the industry it hopes to replace – and it comes at a time of reckoning for the livestock industry.
Recent investigations have shown how departments of the UN and the EU have been heavily influenced by lobbyists from the animal industry on matters including environmental sustainability and caged farming, respectively. The former is striking, given that officials were pressured to water down their reporting about the effects of the livestock sector’s emissions.
And earlier this week, it emerged that food production in Brazil, the world’s largest beef exporter, accounts for 74% of its total emissions. And of these, 78% are associated with the beef industry. It comes on the back of alt-protein companies – which have long focused on the environmental superiority of their analogues – doubling down on the health aspects of their products.
What we eat is just as crucial as how it affects us and the planet – and increasingly so. It’s more important than ever for brands to be transparent on-pack about the health and climate credentials of their offerings, as evidenced by recent scientific studies and consumer surveys on product labelling and government clampdowns on greenwashing.
Will product labels like Nutri-Score and Eco-score be standard images on food packaging globally?
Courtesy: Colruyt
Health and sustainability are key for consumers
Let’s take meat as an example. It has a much higher carbon footprint than plant-based or cultivated alternatives, and most red and processed meat products that have a climate label on their packaging will have a low score. In Belgium, for example, a mince and pork blend at Colruyt supermarket has a red E Eco-score, the lowest possible. Similarly, in Scotland, Lidl trialled carbon labelling in 105 supermarkets in 2021, and one brand’s bacon had a C rating.
These labels have been found to influence people’s purchasing decisions, as evidenced by a peer-reviewed study of 255 Brits (a small sample size) last month. It found that 63% of consumers would be deterred from purchasing meat if it had an eco score in the red, while 52% would consider buying a meat alternative if it had a better rating. Meanwhile, 58% said they’re interested in eco-labels, but require more information – highlighting the need for more education and awareness among consumers.
In 2020, Carbon Trust carried out an analysis of three global YouGov polls totalling 10,540 participants, finding that two-thirds of respondents find carbon labelling a good idea across all countries surveyed. Support was highest in Italy (82%), France (80%) and Spain (79%). It’s because of these attitudes that industry giants like Upfield and Hilton have introduced carbon labels on their products and menus, respectively, while Unilever has committed to doing so (although it hasn’t implemented anything yet).
In terms of health labels, a French study of 1,201 adolescents aged 11-17 last year revealed that 54% had already been impacted by Nutri-Score labels during food purchases, indicating how these labels affect behaviours across demographics. This is key since peer-reviewed research last month revealed that for children and adolescents, increased plant-based food consumption alongside food fortification and supplementation where needed is recommended for sustainable and nutritionally adequate diets.
In general, health and sustainability are growing drivers of consumers’ food choices. Last year, an 8,000-person McKinsey survey covering the US, UK, France and Germany revealed that between 37-52% of people have cut their meat consumption in the last year out of health concerns, with similar or higher numbers for salt, fat, sugar and processed foods. Across the four countries, eating more fresh fruits and vegetables was the most significant change they’ve made in their diets since the pandemic.
Additionally, 60% said they value sustainable solutions – but health came out as a bigger priority, with 60% choosing it as their most important eating priority, versus a third who picked sustainability. Another survey from 2022 showed that 73% of Brits felt it was important for food and drink to have low carbon footprints, while 49% wanted to see carbon footprint labelling on products.
Consumers want food that’s better for them and the planet, and companies that can help them buy the right products will likely be winners. That’s what a study found earlier this month, stating that “food companies can enhance their sustainability efforts by prompting customers to think before nudging them into consuming more sustainable food”.
Courtesy: Ashbury
Increased government attention
There are more regulations and proposals regarding carbon and nutrition labelling, as well as greenwashing. In 2022, the EU Commission announced it would introduce “harmonised mandatory front-of-pack nutrition labelling” to “empower consumers to make informed, healthy and sustainable food choices” by the end of the year, although this has now been postponed and the legislation is yet to be implemented.
But some countries – like France, Spain and Belgium – have already adopted Nutri-Score labels, while certain brands in Portugal, Slovenia, Austria and Ukraine have voluntarily begun using these labels to better inform consumers. Food products in the UK also have a nutrition label designed by the Food Standards Agency.
Meanwhile, France and Denmark are set to introduce environmental labelling schemes in 2024. There have been calls for a similar plan in the UK too. These moves signal a wider effort to curb greenwashing across product categories. The UK’s new Green Claims Code lays out a six-point checklist to help businesses make credible environmental claims.
The EU, meanwhile, finalised a new law to effectively ban greenwashing last month, banning terms like ‘carbon-neutral’ and ‘eco-friendly’ from product labels, unless businesses can provide “proof of recognised excellent environmental performance relevant to the claim”. One of its proposed sister laws, the Green Claims Directive, mandates businesses to assess and meet new minimum “substantiation requirements” for sustainability claims – but progress on this has halted.
“Generic environmental claims are popping up everywhere, from food to textiles. Consumers end up lost in a jungle of green claims with no clue about which ones are trustworthy,” said Ursula Pachl, deputy director of consumer advocacy group BEUC.
She added: “Consumers have a crucial role to play in the green transition, so it’s good news they will have more information to make sustainable choices when buying food, new clothes or home appliances. The new EU rules will enable consumers to navigate through a sea of green claims and choose durable products that live up to expectations.”
Courtesy: Ashbury
Startups and data solutions creating better labels
A bunch of businesses and organisations are helping businesses measure their eco impacts and put climate and nutrition labels on their products. UK food regulatory consultants Ashbury recently conducted research to gauge what these labels could look like, and used AI-generated images to illustrate the results. Products like beef, milk, cheese and dark chocolate all had high footprints, while items like tea had low scores.
In 2021, British startup Provenance launched its Provenance Framework, an open-source rulebook listing the criteria companies need to fulfil to make a true environmental claim, and avoid greenwashing and misleading consumers. And Agribalyse, a French life-cycle assessment database for food and agriculture, provides environmental reference data on over 2,500 products consumed in France (including imported foods).
There’s also the True Animal Protein Price coalition, which is lobbying governments to reflect the true climate cost of these products and increase the VAT on meat to offset the tax on fresh produce. Meanwhile, startups like My Emissions, Planet FWD, Foodsteps, Reewild and Klimato all help food businesses reduce their emissions and better label their products.
Speaking on the Investing in Regenerative Agriculture and Food podcast, Tina Owens, a regenerative agriculture consultant, highlighted how only 1% of nutrition data is tracked on food labels, explaining that this is a huge opportunity for brands. ”If we know 1% of nutrition, we’re not even at the rotary phone stage of nutrition. We’re at the telegraph stage,” she explained. “And yet, we as consumers know to seek those things out for purchasing. And so, the bare minimum… is what we’re after – we’re after this foundational step.”
Despite many politicians opposing climate funding – and some denying climate change altogether – a survey of 2,700 Americans shows that people are buying products with sustainability messaging more than conventional ones, as well as paying more for them. When will its leaders catch up?
Americans may have a bad reputation in many quarters, given their leaders’ insistence on ignoring the climate crisis (they’re not the only ones) and the population’s refusal to link what they eat to climate change.
But there are two sides to every coin, and American habits on sustainability are no different, according to a recent survey by New York University’s Stern Center for Sustainable Business (CSB), which found that products marketed sustainably are growing twice as fast as those marketed conventionally while selling at a 28% premium.
CSB partnered with Edelman and nine brands in the apparel, food and beverage, tech, household items and personal care sectors for the survey, testing how messaging on core product attributes and sustainability fare with customers’ purchasing intent. Across the board, category claims (for example, ‘tastes great’) are crucial and non-negotiable, and adding sustainability messaging to these helps increase brands’ reach.
Consumers want quality first
Courtesy: Edelman/NYU Center for Sustainable Business
Americans responded most positively to messaging that talked about personal health benefits (for themselves and their families), individual financial savings, and impact on the immediate world and communities around them. Claims around animal welfare, supporting local farmers, and 100% sustainable sourcing also performed well.
But such messaging worked best when aligned with core attributes. Product quality is key – “nobody wants to buy a laundry detergent that doesn’t clean well, even if it is sustainable”, as researchers Randi Kronthal-Sacco and Tensie Whelan write. People want to know first that the brand is delivering the benefits of the products they’re buying (whether the detergent would clean clothes well, a lotion would moisturise the skin properly, or if a food item tastes good).
The survey found that while honing in on these core attributes alone would appeal to 44% of people, adding two sustainability claims on top would increase their appeal by 24-33 percentage points, with an average of 74% found across the nine brands. In that vein, the most convincing marketing claims could be “good for your skin and the planet” or “100% sustainably farmed for great taste”.”
Courtesy: Edelman/NYU Center for Sustainable Business
Interestingly, consumers were less interested in the scientific reasons behind a brand’s eco claims, unless it was tied to a personal reason to care – for example, “reduced air pollution” would be trumped by “reduced air pollution for cleaner air to breathe”. The same goes for recycled packaging: unless it’s 100% recycled packaging, these attributes don’t resonate with people without an additional factor, such as “microplastic-free packaging for human and ocean health”.
People across all demographics in the US are looking to buy products that enhance their quality of life from a sustainability perspective, especially when associated with themselves, their families or their community.
A green gap?
Courtesy: Getty Images via Canva
We talk a lot about greenwashing – where companies claim to be eco-friendly but it turns out to just be a facade. But how does it work when it’s the public’s turn? Is there a ‘green gap’ between what consumers say they’ll buy, and what they’ll actually end up purchasing?
CSB partnered with insights firm Circana to evaluate barcode data on 250,000 products in the consumer-packaged goods (CPG) category, dating back to 2013. The analysis found that while sustainably marketed products only made up 17.3% of all CPG product sales, they’re responsible for 30% of the sector’s overall growth.
In fact, one of every two new CPG items sold in 2021 had one or more sustainability attributes. Segments like dairy, yoghurt and toilet paper saw more than 60% of products sell with eco claims. The sustainable market share has kept growing, while conventional products have witnessed deficit growth.
The demographic divide
Courtesy: Edelman/NYU Center for Sustainable Business
CSB notes that for widely available categories, all demographics buy sustainable products, but there are differences in who buys how much. Younger consumers, for example, over-index on eco purchasing, as do people with higher incomes or education and urbanites.
Gen X, middle-income, suburban and rural Americans also tend to buy products with sustainable claims. But cost and availability constraints mean people with lower incomes or education (up to a high-school education, for example) and retirees buy fewer of these items. But the researchers add: “As we see these products become more available and the premiums decrease, we are likely to see more purchasing from those groups as well.”
They conclude that most Americans would like to purchase products that are healthier, help save costs, protect their children’s futures, improve animal welfare, support local farmers, and are 100% sustainably sourced. “Consumers don’t see it as a political position, and our research finds that Americans are carrying through with that purchase intent,” write Whelan and Kronthal-Sacco.
“Every leader thinking twice about sustainability on the grounds of it being ‘divisive’ needs to know this: if you communicate sustainability the right way, it will appeal across political affiliation, income, gender, education levels, and age groups,” said Edelman CEO Richard Edelman. “Sustainability is an amplifier and if brands embrace it, we can exponentially increase growth and trust.”
“The sustainability amplifier effect is real and can help brands reach and engage more people,” added Kronthal-Sacco. “We hope this mobilises brands and marketers to act and put sustainability at the core of business strategy, innovation, and communications.”
The other group that does need to mobilise is the people who run the country. With a presidential election coming up next year – and greenwashing and climate change more in the spotlight than ever before (rightly so) – the government needs to step up against misleading eco claims and provide a framework for companies to do better by the climate and their consumers.
Single-use paper cups for coffee may not be as eco-friendly as you think, as they still contain a thin coating of plastic that can leach chemicals into water and harm aquatic animals, according to a new study. Researchers found that coffee cups made from paper can be as toxic to aquatic midge larvae as plastic cups, and call for transparency regulations in the plastic industry.
Coffee and climate have a rocky relationship. Climate change has disrupted coffee production and threatened the existence of several species of the crop, while coffee itself has been found to drive deforestation. In fact, when calculating greenhouse gas emissions per 1,000 kilocalories, coffee tops the list of researched foods with emissions at 50.95kg of carbon dioxide equivalent.
There have been efforts to reduce the impact of coffee on climate change, with some even making beanless alternatives to the drink. This is all in terms of the drink itself, but then there’s the packaging itself. An increasing number of coffee brands have introduced eco-friendlier elements replacing plastic with paper, including straws and cups.
But the new research has found that the latter may not be as sustainable as once thought. The University of Gothenburg study, published in the journal Environmental Pollution, examined the impact of paper cups – especially those not disposed of properly – on aquatic midge larvae. To ensure that paper cups don’t absorb liquids or disintegrate when hot liquid is poured in, they’re lined with a thin film of plastic, and that’s where the problems start.
The unknown chemicals
Source: Canva
The researchers placed both plastic and paper cups in water or sediment for up to four weeks, allowing them to leach out. Then, the midge larvae were added to each environment. They found that, regardless of which material contaminated the environment, the larvae grew less in both the sediment and the water.
While no chemical analysis was done to find out which substances leached from the paper cups, lead author Bethanie Carney Almroth suspects it’s a mix of chemicals that damaged the two media, according to Wired. Disposable coffee cups are made up of a mix of synthetic chemicals and materials, including often toxic processing aids and heat stabilisers. Even manufacturers using plant-derived substances like PLA, corn or cassava to coat paper cups sometimes add chemicals for stability.
Carney Almroth noted that it’s hard to know which chemicals are used in these applications. “This would all be much easier if companies were required to tell us what they use in their products,” she told Wired.
While recycling seems like a viable solution, it’s more complicated than that. First off, it can be difficult for most recycling centres to separate the plastic coating from the cup’s paper. In fact, very few centres in the UK actually accept paper cups. Then, even if they manage to extract the coating, plastic recycling is in itself a major problem.
In the UK, only 4% of coffee cups are actually recycled. One estimate goes even further, saying only 0.25% were recycled in the UK, as of 2019. And while only 35% of all waste is actually recycled, that number drops to just 9% for plastic waste. Finally, experts believe there is too much importance put on the act. One study has placed recycling penultimate on a list of 50 actions people can take to reduce their carbon footprint.
Ditch single-use, embrace reusable
Source: Canva
To counter this problem, Carney Almroth suggested using established materials to build a circular economy. She explained that fewer raw materials should be extracted and processed into plastics, adding: “But we also need to look at the alternatives that are put forth as we make a shift into something more sustainable to make sure that we’re not just replacing one product with another.”
There have been a host of innovations trying to solve the paper cup problem. Packaging solutions company ChoosePlanetA’s The Good Cup is made from home-compostable paper that’s free from polyethylene coating and doesn’t need a plastic lid. Poland’s Picup, meanwhile, has launched Europe’s first 100% biodegradable coffee cups that have seeds that can plant a tree after the drink is consumed.
There’s also Pinyapel, a paper made from waste pineapple leaves by the Design Center of the Philippines, which can be used to make coffee cups. Edible cups are also touted as a solution – Auckland-based startup Twiice makes biscotti cups that can be eaten after the coffee is finished, which were trialed by Air New Zealand.
While all these solutions are hoping to introduce a more climate-friendly and less toxic way of drinking coffee, Carney Almroth and her colleagues feel the end game is to move away from disposable cups altogether. “We cannot afford to only replace one material (i.e., plastic cups) with another (i.e., paper-based products) but rather must reduce consumption and use of single-use products overall,” the study concludes.
Carney Almroth sums it up in a statement: “Now, we need to shift back and move away from disposable lifestyles. It is better if you bring your own mug when buying takeaway coffee. Or, by all means, take a few minutes, sit down and drink your coffee from a porcelain mug.”
If you’re tired of buying different alt-milks for different purposes and dealing with all that packaging, or just feel like experimenting with plant-based milks that don’t yet exist, you could do with a nut milk maker. Here are some of the best.
According to industry think tank the Good Food Institute, Americans bought 2% fewer plant-based milks in 2022, but spent 9% more. There has long been a premium on vegan alternatives to conventional protein products like dairy, meat and eggs, and this is no different for alt-milk in the US, which exceeds traditional milk prices by 87%.
Food magazine Bon Appétit found that the cheapest whole milk in major US supermarkets came to two cents per ounce, compared to four and six cents for almond and oat milk, respectively. In fact, the overall cost of plant-based milk is 13-14% higher, according to the Guardian.
This is all to say that as people consumers are hit by inflation and price hikes, and become more conscious about ingredient and packaging waste, some might want to take matters into their own hands.
Courtesy Open Funk
One way to do so is by using a blender and some form of filtration. If you’re like me, you have a billion jars lying around from your nut butter purchases, zero-waste store visits, or chilli oil experiments. For people like us, products like Open Funk’s Re:Mix, which is a ‘circular blender’, are perfect – it provides you with a lid that fits any 125ml to 1.2 litre jar, no matter the shape. It’s a wonderful way to use what you have and cut down on waste.
Meanwhile, dedicated home machines to make your own alt-milk provide a great solution – and they come in various price ranges to suit your needs. Here are some the best nut milk makers you can buy right now:
ChefWave Milkmade Non-Dairy Milk Maker
Courtesy: ChefWave
Packed with six programmes – almond, soy, cashew, oat, macadamia and coconut milk – the ChefWave Milkmade is one of the most highly rated plant-based milk makers out there. You can choose to make either 10oz or 20oz of milk, and each cycle only takes 10 minutes from start to finish.
There is barely any residue (and any minor grit can be filtered away), which reduces waste and eschews the need to figure out what to do with the leftover pulp from the processed ingredients. The machine does use steam while grinding and blending the ingredients to improve the texture, so the milk comes out warm. And while this can then be chilled in the fridge, you won’t get cold milk ready to use straight away.
But you don’t need to pre-soak ingredients (though rice and unprocessed oats could do with that), nor do you need a nut milk bag. As a bonus, the machine – which comes with a glass pitcher for easy storage – has a self-cleaning feature for the grinding jar. However, it isn’t cheap, landing in what you’d call a mid-range value for a nut milk maker.
You can buy the ChefWave Milkmade Non-Dairy Milk Maker online for $249.95.
Almond Cow
Courtesy: Almond Cow
Almond Cow is one of the most well-known nut milk brands. It’s probably the fastest as well (reviews have said it can make milk within 15 seconds to a minute). But don’t believe its name – it can make produce than just almond milk.
It has a built-in strainer that automatically filters the liquid from the nuts, seeds and grains you use to make plant-based milk, with a capacity of 48oz (about six cups). But it does require a higher ratio of dry ingredients to water, and hence produces a lot of leftover pulp, which it recommends repurposing in recipes like dips, soups, beverages, etc.
Cleaning has also been mentioned as a potential issue, with the blade attached to the top that contains all the electric components. And like the ChefWave Milkmade, its mid-range cost means it isn’t inexpensive.
On a slightly lower end of the price spectrum is the Nutr Machine, which is essentially a blender equipped with heating functions. It has three heat settings – room temp, warm (60°C) and boiling (100°C), with the latter used for milks that require cooking, such as soy and rice.
There is no filter involved, but usually, there isn’t a lot of sediment left over. You can process it twice to smoothen things out. There’s also a feature that can keep your milk warm after the processing. But there is a capacity issue – the Nutr Machine is designed to make single servings of milk, between 8oz and 13oz.
The boiling function takes about 20 minutes, and if you want to make larger batches, you’ll need to split it into multiple attempts and wait for the machine to cool down as it can overheat. But it does have a self-cleaning function and its compact size means it is easy to store.
Also in the lower tier of the pricing pyramid, Tribest’s Soyabella is quite similar to the Almond Cow, with the exception of an added heating setting. While the machine does filter out the pulp, the resulting milk can often be grainy – so running the cycle another time or using an additional filter helps create a smoother texture.
Its build can be tricky, as when the basket is filled with nuts, the attachment isn’t always the most intuitive to put in place. The hot function on the Soyabella – which has a capacity of about 44oz – does take 20 minutes to finish, and cleaning can be tedious as all components need to be hand-washed, and that’s after you’ve fished out the okara or nut pulp.
Tribest also offers a Soyabella model with a tofu kit for those who’d like to make homemade tofu, which includes a mould/press and cheesecloth. (You do need your own coagulant.)
You can buy the Tribest Soyabella online for $109.95.
NutraMilk Nut Processor
Courtesy: Bonavita
The clue is in the name. The NutraMilk Nut Processor is at the very high end of the price spectrum and takes a two-step approach to making plant-based milk. It’s essentially a premium food processor with a spigot, with the machine processing unroasted nuts into nut butter, before asking you to add milk and blending it all together.
It can also produce two litres of milk, which is the highest on this list. You also don’t need to soak any nuts or seeds – in fact, if you do choose to soak them, they’ll need to be dry before you can use them in the NutraMilk Nut Processor. There’s also a stainless steel filter to help remove any residual pulp and pour a smoother plant-based milk through the tap.
Cleaning is easy too as all parts are dishwasher-friendly, but the multistep process does mean there is a longer wait time to make room-temperature alt milk. Oat milk can take up to five minutes, while almond milk might need 11 minutes. But there is a great multi-utility factor if you’re into oat and seed flours or unroasted nut butters.
You can buy the NutraMilk Nut Processor online for $499.95.
A new online designed tool backed by A Plastic Planet aims to help designers and business leaders eradicate one trillion pieces of plastic waste from the global economy by 2025.
Following two years of development, the PlasticFree site is now live; the new design tool spearheaded by the action group A Plastic Planet is aimed at tacking plastic in packaging, textiles, and products.
PlasticFree
The platform is helmed by more than 40 of the world’s pre-eminent designers, scientists, and business leaders. PlasticFree’s Advisory Council includes Thomas Heatherwick; Sir David Chipperfield; Tom Dixon; Shaway Yeh and Skylar Tibbits of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as business leaders such as Eden Project co-founder Sir Tim Smit, WeTransfer co-founder Damian Bradfield, and Natural Fiber Welding Founder Dr Luke Haverhals, as well as Green Queen own Sonalie Figueiras.
Scientists including medical expert Professor Hugh Montgomery OBE of University College London and green chemistry pioneer Professor Terry Collins of Carnegie Mellon University are also part of the program.
According to A Plastic Planet, PlasticFree is aimed at supporting the more than 160 million global creatives that work on product and packaging design. The site features reports on more than 100 plastic-free alternatives and insights into system changes including solid formulations and permanent reusable packaging.
Plastic is a global problem exacerbating ocean pollution, landfill waste, and human health issues. An estimated one million plastic bottles are purchased every minute, while up to five trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year, according to the United Nations.
“Everything begins with a creative process,” Sian Sutherland, co-founder of A Plastic Planet, said in a statement. “There is significant power held by the 160m global creatives to help us rethink how we take, make and waste, to reimagine different systems and material uses in a very different way from today. Our default dependence on incredible but toxic and indestructible plastic has to end. Designers want to be part of the solution but there is a minefield of misinformation out there. If we can ignite and empower creatives by giving them trusted, relevant data and inspiring case studies, we believe we can change everything much faster.”
System change
According to Sutherland, the platform has “one simple goal” — to make the designer “the smartest, most confident person in the room to push back against that inevitable brief that says just use a bioplastic or a recycled polymer, so we get a green tick.”
Sutherland says the focus is on system change “not just better materials.”
“We are extremely grateful and proud that so many design and science leaders are supporting us on this mission. Bringing together creatives and scientists is imperative to fully educate and convince those making critical decisions on our future,” Sutherland said.
The tool is already earning high praise. Jos Harrison, Global Head of Brand Experience & Design, Reckitt Benckiser Group, said there are “few things more exciting to a designer than finding the combination of like-minded passion and depth of expertise. PlasticFree combines these attributes in a platform that will empower teams of designers inside and outside our organisation – and across the industry; this can only be a good thing – supercharging the unique capacity of designers to imagine and improve the future.”
Laura Stein, CCO, Bruce Mau Design says designers need to understand the full life-cycle of what they make. “Instead of cobbling together continually emerging technologies and ideas, using PlasticFree makes it easy—and inspiring— to better our practices by bringing it all together in one trustworthy place. PlasticFree fills an important void to accelerate positive action against our biggest human challenges.”
“This is the tool I have waited my entire professional career for,” said Caitlin Gauthier, Founder and CEO of design group CONFEDDE.
As part of the launch, PlasticFree will attend the World Economic Forum at Davos. It is also holding an event at the Parsons School of Design in February in partnership with Dezeen. It’s aiming for 10,000 subscribers before the end of the year.
Living a vegan lifestyle is getting easier day by day as consumers are getting more environmentally conscious, which further motivates brands and makers to create more eco-friendly products. Watches have been a space without much innovation on the planet-forward side in the past, but all that has changed as a new generation of watchmakers rises up with options for us animal-loving and anti-plastic folk. The global selection is actually pretty impressive nowadays, if you are on the hunt for that perfect timepiece. To help guide your search, we’ve rounded up the 20 best plant-based watches on the market, all made with recyclable and biodegradable materials, and all worthy of being showcased on your cruelty-free wrist.
Souce: Baume 7 Mercier
1. Baume & Mercier Watches
If you are passionate about design, then Baume & Mercier’s 100% vegan watches are for you. Crafted with plant-derived materials and recycled plastic waste, Baume as a watch brand carries the legacy of Swiss heritage and excellence in its designs and you can never find something as elegant as a Baume & Mercier watch on your wrist.
Made in the Netherlands (designed in Geneva) from cork, vegan leather and recycled plastic waste. Shop online – from US$435 – US$2,500.
Source: Fjordson
2. Fjordson Vegan Watches
Approved by The Vegan Society and PETA, Fjordson is an awarded vegan watchmaking company in Belgium. The unisex timepieces from Fjordson have vegan leather straps and these are delivered in recycled packaging. The standard classy looks on the outside and the swiss mechanism inside are likely to make you wish for these vegan watches.
Made in Switzerland from nylon and synthetic fabric. Shop online– from US$233.
Source: TRIWA
3. TRIWA Green Watches
The scandinavian fashion brand TRIWA is making watches to spread peace and eco-friendly initiatives. Designed and developed in Stockholm, these watches are made of recycled illegal firearms metal and the plastic waste from oceans. TRIWA also creates other environment friendly accessories such as sunglasses and bracelets.
Made in Sweden from recycled plastic and metal waste. Shop online – from US$90 – US$299.
Source: Jacques Farel Hayfield
4. Jacques Farel Hayfield Eco-Conscious Watches
Switzerland based eco watch brand Jacques Farel Hayfield creates vegan watches with a classy and minimalist look. Made with walnut wood, recycled steel and vegan fiber, the watches from this Swiss brand are sustainable luxurious products available at an affordable price.
Made in Switzerland from walnut wood, vegan fiber and recycled steel. Shop online – from US$150.
Source: Evig Gron
5. Evig Gron Vegan Watches
Swedish luxury watch brand Evig Gron is dedicated towards animal welfare and climate change. Their watches have a scratch proof crystal and a strap made with portugese cork, they are durable, PETA approved and 100% vegan.
Made in Italy, Sweden, Portugal and Switzerland from cork. Shop online – from US$329.
Source: Kawayan
6. Kawayan Bamboo Watches
The Philippines based Kawayan watches is an innovative eco-sensitive company that creates watches from bamboo. Their watches are not only sustainable but durable and have good looks as well. The unisex timepieces from Kawayan are splash-resistant and comes with an adjustable wooden strap. However, not all their products are completely vegan and leather-free.
Made in the Philippines from bambooand stainless steel. Shop online – fromUS$43 – US$100.
Made in the UK from pinatex pineapple leather. Shop online – from US$160.
Source: Hurtig Lane
8. Hurtig Lane Vegan Watches
Offering leather-free and PVC free watches, Hurtig Lane is a Spanish fashion accessories brand located in the beautiful city of Barcelona. Apart from creating elegant vegan timepieces, it also deals in eco-friendly beauty face masks, makeup brushes and jewelry items.
Made in Spain from recycled plastic and cotton. Shop online – from US$120.
Source: Ksana
9. Ksana Watches
Available in charming neon colors, Ksana vegan watches from the UK have recyclable silicone straps and stainless steel cases. Ksana itself maintains a recycle facility for its watches and their components, the company also donates 1% of its earnings to planet-friendly initiatives.
Made in the UK from silicon. Shop online – from US$100.
Source: TIVC
10. TIVC Handmade Cruelty-Free Watches
This watch brand from Williamstown, Australia handcrafts captivating vegan timepieces. The watches are available in 40mm and 36mm cases. TIVC offers different kinds of strap textures and some of their collections are also manufactured in Italy.
Made in Hong Kong from recycled aluminium and high grade polyurethane derived vegan leather. Shop online – from US$140 to US$179.
Source: Nox-Bridge
11. Nox-Bridge Vegan Watches
If you love limited edition timepieces with a vintage look, then Nox-Bridge from New Zealand is the perfect vegan watch brand for you. Equipped with stainless steel, interchangeable and animal-friendly straps, the water-proof vegan watches from Nox-Bridge are made with Swiss technology inside them.
Made in Japan from stainless steel and recyclable vegan leather. Shop online – from US$ 209.40.
Source: Olivia Burton
12. Olivia Burton’s Vegan Watch Collection
London-based women’s accessories brand Olivia Burton offers vegan watches with beautiful floral print and vegan material strap. However, not all of the watches and accessories from Olivia Burton are vegan but the timepieces from their limited vegan watch collection are likely to win your heart.
Made in London, UK from vegan leather. Shop online – from US$125.
Source: Fabrik
13. Nordgreen Eco Watches
Designed by Jacob Wagner, the premium quality eco watches from Nordgreen are not completely vegan, but they do offer some 100% animal-friendly vegan leather and stainless steel watches that are waterproof and allow you to spend for a green cause on your every purchase from Nordgreen.
Made in Denmark from cotton and polyester blend. Shop online – from US$250.
Source: Dan & Mez
14. Dan & Mez Sustainable Vegan Watches
With a mission to change the leather industry, Dan & Mez from Austria is creating PETA approved vegan watches for both men and women. The strap of these watches are made from pineapple fibre and leaves.
Made in Germany from pinatex pineapple leather. Shop online – from US$191.
Source: BOTTA
15. BOTTA Plant Leather Watches
The made-in-Germany watches from BOTTA are available in dazzling designs and bright metallic colors. Leather-free watches from BOTTA have straps made of vegetable tanned leather which is 100% vegan and eco-friendly, but not all their watches are vegan. BOTTA’s timepieces have received numerous awards for their minimalist style and gorgeous appeal.
Made in Germany from vegetable tanned leather and rubber. Shop online – from US$465 – $1,860.
Made in the UK from polyurethane. Shop online – from US$159.
Source: Solios
17. Solios Solar Watches
The solar powered vegan watches from Solios are one of their kind. Avoiding chemical waste, and animal derived materials in the process of manufacturing their watches, Solios is completely dedicated towards creating sustainable timepieces, the company also claims a life-long battery life of their watches.
The Canadian brand offers vegan watches for both men and women at a reasonable price.
Made in Canada from recyclable silicon. Shop online – from US$258.
Source: JORD
18. JORD Wooden Watches
It is a completely vegan watch brand based in the US. Apart from using wood for its watches straps, JORD is also experimenting with coffee beans, palms and other tree-derived materials.
The company also sells other accessories such as bags and apple watch bands.
Made in the US from wood, coffee beans and stainless steel. Shop online – from US$159.
Note: In this piece, we have highlighted the vegan friendly strap materials, but hopefully it’s clear that all watches featured are also made from various metals and glass.
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