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Redefining Food Sustainability: Upcycling Food Waste
94 Plays1 year ago
Hey there, welcome back to Green New Perspective! Today, we're chatting with Caroline Coto from Renewal Mill about the big issue of food waste and its impact on climate change.
Did you know 40% of our food ends up in landfills? It's not just about the emissions, but also the wasted resources like water and nutrients. But here's the good news - reducing food waste is a powerful way to combat climate change.
And that's exactly what Renewal Mill is doing by upcycling food waste back into our supply chain. Sure, it's a challenging space to build a brand in, but with partnerships and collaboration, we can drive change forward.
So let's keep learning, keep acting and keep making a difference together. Don't forget to subscribe and share your thoughts! Cheers until next time!
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Transcript
Introduction & Purpose
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello, hello, you're watching another episode of Green New Perspective, a podcast where we talk about sustainability with guests from climate tech, nature tech, and agri tech space, and learn about innovations happening within those industries.
Guest Introduction: Caroline Cotto
00:00:21
Speaker
So my guest today is Caroline Cotto. Caroline is a CEO and co-founder of Renewal Mill, an upcycling food enterprise dedicated to combating climate change and food waste. So if you want to learn on why food waste is a critical issue that is often overlooked and how reducing it is one of the most effective strategies to combat climate change, stay with us and listen to what Caroline has to say. Enjoy!
Understanding Food Waste
00:00:54
Speaker
Hey Caroline, and welcome to the Green New Perspective podcast. Thanks so much for having me. Super excited to be here. So for starters, can you explain for our listeners the significance and impact of food waste and what it has on climate change?
00:01:08
Speaker
Absolutely. Food waste is a massive problem globally. We're throwing about 40% of the food that we produce out every year, which is just an insane amount that often ends up in landfill where it releases harmful, nothing greenhouse gas emissions.
00:01:27
Speaker
But also when we waste that food, we're not only having the emissions that come from its end destination, but also all of the resources that went into growing that food. So we're wasting all of the water. We're wasting all of the kind of like
00:01:43
Speaker
nutrients in the soil and the land, and then all of the carbon that was used to actually grow and harvest that food. Collectively, according to Project Drawdown, which is one of the leading climate research organizations, reducing food waste is actually one of the number one things that we can do to stop
00:02:03
Speaker
climate warming followed closely by eating more plant-based diet. So lots of potential for impact because collectively I think food waste is responsible for about 8% of total greenhouse gas emissions.
00:02:19
Speaker
Which is a lot. Yeah.
Upcycling Solutions by Renewal Mill
00:02:22
Speaker
Can we now talk about your company Renewal Mill and how you started it and how do you actually mitigate those climate change impacts, food waste impacts, sorry.
00:02:36
Speaker
Yeah, so food waste is happening at all parts of the supply chain. So we have food waste happening when we leave food on fields that are kind of, you know, ugly or couldn't have make it to the grocery store. We're wasting food in our own homes when we over purchase at the grocery store and then, you know, don't eat all that food and throw it out.
00:02:55
Speaker
And then in the middle, there's also a lot of food waste happening at the manufacturing level. So lots of producers generate byproducts or side streams when they produce their food. And often those byproducts are just thrown away and taken to landfill.
00:03:13
Speaker
So my co-founder and I at Renewal Mill, we stumbled across this problem because she had previously founded a juice company and was seeing all of the food waste happening in the juicing process. So she was kind of left at the end of every day with a giant mountain of fruit and vegetable pulp that she couldn't use. And then we had a fortuitous conversation with the owner of a tofu company who said, you think you make a lot of pulp in your
00:03:41
Speaker
you know, tiny juicing business, I'm making tons and tons of soybean pulp every week at my tofu facility that's going to waste. And this pulp is called Okara, it's a traditional Japanese word. And that pulp is actually full of fiber and protein and totally processed in a completely food safe manner.
00:04:00
Speaker
We got our hands on some of that pulp, realized that it had not only a really rich culinary history, but all of this nutrition left in it and said, there has to be a better way to keep all of this food in the supply chain rather than just sending it to landfill. Our company, Renewal Mill, sets it out to mine the food system for places where nutrition is being lost and find ways to return it to the human food supply chain through the process of upcycling.
Consumer Education & Perception Shift
00:04:30
Speaker
Yeah, and the concept of upcycling food is still new to many consumers, so how do you educate and raise awareness among consumers about the benefits of upcycle food?
00:04:42
Speaker
Yeah, so I would like to say it's not actually a new concept. Like if you've ever, you know, grown your own food or if you've been a chef or, you know, had times of scarcity, you've probably upcycled. You've gone through a lot of lengths to use all of the food that you either have grown or purchased. And so we're trying to kind of help
00:05:03
Speaker
production companies like food manufacturers, rethink about how they think about their input. What if we could use 100 percent of the food that you are buying to bring into your facility for further processing? With upcycling, it differs from recycling because we don't have to break down the byproducts into their component parts in order to reuse them.
00:05:27
Speaker
Instead, we're trying to elevate the side streams or byproducts to a higher use in their current form. And so the formal definition about cycled food is using something that would have otherwise previously gone to waste that has measurable impact on the environment and returning it to the human food supply chain.
00:05:49
Speaker
So we educate people about it. We're really trying to talk about that circular economy sort of stinking and say, you might be familiar with upcycling in terms of furniture or clothing, giving new life to old things, but what if we did that for food as well? And do you see some resistance when you say that your food is upcycling? How do people react?
00:06:19
Speaker
I think it's definitely changed a lot in the last five years. So Renewal Mill was founded in 2016 when we started, you know, early back in the early days, people would be a little put off. They're like, oh, you want us to eat trash? And we're like, no, that is absolutely not what we're talking about. But I think, you know, all of us, wherever you are in the world, are starting to experience real effects of climate change in our daily lives. And I think people are like
00:06:49
Speaker
through the pandemic have had a better understanding of food waste in their own homes, understanding that food waste is a problem. And so everybody universally agrees, we want to help stop food waste. And so right now, we see a lot of interest from consumers in upcycled food because it's a consumer-driven solution to food waste.
00:07:11
Speaker
So I can actually help fight food waste with the power of my dollar. And upcycle food is super delicious. So really emphasizing that.
00:07:21
Speaker
Yeah. Well, we talk about sustainability in general here on this podcast, so we always cover climate change part and then the social part. So can you tell us, do you contribute to enhancing food security and accessibility, especially for communities that may struggle with access to nutritious food?
Food Security & Partnerships
00:07:45
Speaker
Yeah, so like I said, we're often processing a lot of the fiber and protein out of our food in our modern industrial food system. And so what Renewal Mill is doing is trying to capture that and return it to the supply chain. And fiber is actually, especially here in the US, one of the things that the American diet is missing most and has huge implications for public health at large. So we do sell our ingredients
00:08:15
Speaker
back to other food companies that want to use it in everything from grain-free chips to grain-free tortillas, baby food,
00:08:24
Speaker
cookies, baked goods, adding that nutrition back in. I think our hope is to be able to use upcycled food solutions to reach more food insecure folks. Right now, a lot of that work is being done by more like food rescue organizations than by upcycled food companies. But as we start to develop relationships with larger companies that have more ability to reach those communities, we do hope that
00:08:53
Speaker
you know, upcycling can be a key solution for hunger alleviation and food insecurity globally. And you mentioned partnerships that you have. So can you tell me more about that, about partnerships or collaborations that you established with other organizations within or outside the food industry?
00:09:14
Speaker
Yeah, partnerships are absolutely key to our business. We would not exist if we weren't partnering. So on a very real level, like our company exists to partner with suppliers and upcycle their byproducts. So our first partner, as I mentioned, is a tofu company.
00:09:32
Speaker
We also partner very closely with soy milk and oat milk producers and have started recently expanding our list of partners into corn meal producers and some juicing and fruit producers as well to capture their byproducts. But then on the marketing side, when we think about how do we market upcycled ingredients,
00:09:56
Speaker
We've also leveraged a lot of partnerships because we know this is still a new concept for consumers. We've aligned ourselves with mission-aligned brands that have a larger audience so that we can tell their audience the story of upcycling and then
00:10:15
Speaker
they can tell our audience their story as well. For example, we've partnered with Miyoko's Creamery, which is a vegan butter company here in the US. They have some leftover butter at the end of their production runs that they can't use. We capture that butter, combine it with our upcycled flour,
00:10:36
Speaker
and use it in a ready-to-eat cookie product. They're very passionate about animal welfare and veganism, so that's the story they're telling to our audience and we're telling the story of upcycling to their audience. Together, we're using that rising tides lifts all boats mentality to promote sustainable food at large.
00:10:59
Speaker
Yeah, you mentioned that marketing is important in changing consumers' point of view on upcycled food.
Brand Messaging & Market Vision
00:11:08
Speaker
And since we are a marketing agency, I have to ask you, what was the vision you had for Renewal Mills' identity when you started and how that vision evolved or changed?
00:11:19
Speaker
Yeah, so we call the company Renewal Mill because we wanted to really invoke the idea of reuse and circularity and also bring some hope back to the food waste and climate discussion because I think there's a lot of bleakness around kind of our current situation in the world. And we wanted to say, you know, what if there was a different way? What if we could
00:11:44
Speaker
focus on a more renewable future where we are using 100% of the food we produce. So that's kind of how the vision for the brand started. I think, as I mentioned, we've definitely had to iterate on how to tell that message because upcycled food was this novel concept. So I think at the end of the day, consumers are still a little bit selfish and they really just want to focus on delicious products. And so that's our, you know,
00:12:13
Speaker
high level messaging is that upcycled food is delicious. It can be better for you and better for the planet. So really taste forward approach. And then for customers that care to do that sort of double click, we're really saying this is a climate friendly food. It's a
00:12:30
Speaker
a food waste solution and you're contributing to some of the greenhouse gas reduction and water savings that come from purchasing that. But yeah, I think if the products aren't delicious that you're selling, then you lose people in that initial phase and you can't even continue the conversation.
00:12:50
Speaker
And so that would be the challenge let's say that you have that you have faced while building the brand and i guess you're still facing it i mean the market is not fully accepted at the upcycle but it's happening but we are not there yet right.
00:13:06
Speaker
Yeah, so we're an ingredients company and a consumer packaged goods company. So we sell our ingredients to other folks as well as use some of them in our own products. I think on the ingredient side, we're starting to see a lot more interest from companies in using upcycled ingredients in their own products, but it's still early days. So I think we're still trying to make sure that they feel comfortable with
00:13:32
Speaker
the supply chain because we are reliant on our partners, but we've chosen by-product streams that are growing. For example, tofu is a growing
00:13:44
Speaker
category as well as oat milk. And so for every pound of soy milk, which is the first step of making tofu, and every pound of oat milk that you make, you make almost a pound of pulp waste. And so we're able to kind of grow our supply as our partners grow their production capacity of their main products.
00:14:05
Speaker
Yeah, and the concept of upcycled food has the potential for widespread adoption and in fact, so how do you see the industry evolving in the coming years and how do you see your company, how can it fit to the part in shaping the more sustainable future?
00:14:25
Speaker
Yeah, we envision a future where you could eat upcycled food for every meal of the day that it really spans every category of the grocery store. And there are hundreds of amazing examples of companies that are doing upcycling of so many different things. So the way left over from making yogurt to avocado pits that are being used to make beverages to
00:14:49
Speaker
day-old bread that's being used to make spirits and beer. So, just a lot of creativity in the space. I think, ultimately, you know, we would like food waste not to be a problem, but we're not really, you know, very close to that future. So, you know, we see upcycled food continuing to grow globally. Like, there's a lot of momentum in the US, but there's also a lot of momentum in Europe and Asia and South America at the moment, too. So,
00:15:19
Speaker
We are going to continue to educate folks through things like the upcycled certification, which is like a mark on front of pack that can help consumers identify which products in the store are helping site food-based, and then also continuing to try to sell to large multinational corporations that can make simple swaps in their products for ingredients they're already using and switch those out for upcycled ingredients.
00:15:48
Speaker
Our goal would be if you walk into the grocery store and, for example, are looking to purchase a conventional baking mix that you choose renewal milk instead, and that you're still getting a delicious baking mix product, but you're choosing one that's just a little bit more friendly for the planet. Yeah, exactly.
Collaboration & Challenges in Sustainability
00:16:09
Speaker
And Renewal Mill, you're actually the co-founder, like you said. So as an entrepreneur in the sustainability space, what are some of the most valuable lessons you've learned along your journey with your company?
00:16:22
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's an exciting time to be an entrepreneur in the climate. There's a lot of funding and interest in the space, but I also think it's important to see what other folks are doing and how you can align your efforts with theirs rather than just trying to be duplicative. If we're going to solve climate change, we really need to work together.
00:16:46
Speaker
And so that's why Renewal Well has been sort of instrumental in founding the Upcycle Food Association, which is the first trade association for all of the companies doing this type of work because we can share learnings and really just help accelerate that.
00:17:03
Speaker
food waste reduction goal. So for example, in our first 18 months of launching the certification, certified products collectively prevented just under a billion pounds of food waste, which is way more than my company Renewal Mill can do on its own. So I would encourage entrepreneurs in the circular economy space to look at how they can work together and, you know,
00:17:25
Speaker
see if their solutions can complement each other. I also think it's important to understand what your stakeholders really care about. There's a lot of large corporate companies that are looking at their ESG goals and trying to see how solutions can align with those. Upcycled Food can be a solution to help achieve some of those. Thinking creatively about the data and how you convey that to your key stakeholders,
00:17:52
Speaker
I think is also really important for success. And then also just, you know, staying passionate and hopeful. Like I said, I think there's a lot of sort of doom and gloom in the climate space. And I think, you know, we as entrepreneurs need to keep going and keep driving that change forward. And that means, you know, keeping your hope high and aligning yourself with people who are, you know, thinking positively about how
00:18:20
Speaker
entrepreneurship can kind of change the trajectory of where we're going. Yeah, I have to say the people within the climate space, climate tech, agri-tech, nature tech are super positive. I have to say that all the people that have talked to you during this podcast, I have to say have a positive outlook on the future or at least they want to contribute to it. So I have to say it is an inspirational environment.
00:18:48
Speaker
Absolutely. Did you have any challenges that you would like to share on that road to building your company?
00:18:59
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I think there's always always challenges. It's like, you know, it wouldn't be growing if there were challenges. I think for us, the fundraising environment has definitely been a challenge. We are kind of a company that arose out of a desire to solve a problem, but we don't fit nicely into a singular box. So we are both an ingredient company.
00:19:25
Speaker
and a CPG company, and we do some private label works. We're talking to both impact investors as well as traditional CPG investors, as well as supply chain investors. It takes a bit of effort to try to find those partners that really understand the full vision and wanting me to have all of these components in order to create a solution.
00:19:52
Speaker
I also think, yeah, there's just a lot of challenges in bringing a novel ingredient to market. If people haven't heard of it, they don't know what it tastes like, they don't know why they should care. And so I think early on we kind of thought we'll just be an ingredients company and then quickly realize that
00:20:10
Speaker
to introduce novel ingredients we needed familiar vehicles. So we had to show them like, okay, this is a chocolate chip cookie made with this ingredient, okara flour, and it tastes just like your favorite chocolate chip cookie. And that really starts the conversation, but it's a long process. So we often see ingredient sales taking like three to five years to materialize because there's so much education and testing that goes into that.
00:20:39
Speaker
But once we have done it a few times, we start to get our legs under us and accelerate that timeline. But I think especially in the early days, it was like, how do you get someone interested in a completely new product?
00:20:58
Speaker
Yeah, I have to say that's the challenge for pretty much every guest that I had on the podcast. We're all doing different things, but I believe that as the industry evolves in general, it's going to be easier and the interest is going to grow. I'm sure of that. So what feedback have you received from customers?
00:21:22
Speaker
Yeah, we definitely have some really passionate, dedicated customers, which is amazing. I think for both our ingredients on their own, people love the functional benefits of them. So they're, like I said, very high in fiber and protein. It's a great way to achieve nutritional goals they're trying to create with their product.
00:21:46
Speaker
And they love the access to the sustainability story that it gives them. So we have some customers that are using it specifically to talk about food waste and climate change, and then we have other customers who are using it
00:22:02
Speaker
for different functional benefits. So for example, we have one baby food company that's using our okara flower to talk about early soy allergen introduction and how introducing allergens early can help prevent babies from developing allergies in
Product Innovation & Customer Feedback
00:22:20
Speaker
adulthood. So not something we would have thought when we started selling the ingredient, but a cool other who get a way for the product.
00:22:29
Speaker
And then on our branded products, which are primarily baking mixes and cookies, yeah, we have a lot of folks who can't believe it's vegan, they can't believe it's gluten-free, and they're like, the renewal mill is my favorite baking mix. I bring it to all of my gatherings because it can serve a wide array of different folks, but then also I can talk about
00:22:55
Speaker
feel good about my purchase because it's not just conventional product. It's something that's really helping affect the larger climate discussion. Have you maybe incorporated some of the feedback that you got from your customers into your product development or improvement process?
Advice for Aspiring Change-makers
00:23:15
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. We do sell directly on our website. We have an insider's group, so we use them to do a lot of our product development testing. So we'll send them things that we're thinking about launching to get their feedback.
00:23:30
Speaker
We're also going to be relaunching our ready-to-eat cookies. So we've been surveying our customers on their preferences on cookies and tweaks that we could make to improve that product. So yeah, definitely try to make it a dialogue with our customers. WLAC feedback is very much a gift.
00:23:53
Speaker
I wanted to ask you one more question. If you were to give advice to a founder or CEO in the sustainability space who is aiming to create a circular economy product like yours, what key insights or lessons would you share with them apart from building partnerships like you already mentioned?
00:24:13
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's important to understand the problem from every angle. I don't think anybody sets out to say, I want to waste a lot of food today. It's just that we look at a lot of the ways that factories have been configured and it was like,
00:24:31
Speaker
most expedient or cost saving measure for them to set it up the way they did. The result of that is a lot of waste. You have to be delicate in having those conversations and saying, what if we reconfigured your manufacturing line this way so that we could upcycle these byproducts or
00:24:53
Speaker
reduce waste in these ways. My advice would be come at approaching the problems of the beginner's mindset. You might have a solution in mind, but you really have to be amenable to understanding why the problem is happening in the first place and adapt to your solution accordingly to be most successful. I would say entrepreneurship
00:25:17
Speaker
at large requires a lot of adaptability and kind of being able to flex on a dime. But I think it's especially important when it comes to approaching other people in the space and relationship building to have that sort of
00:25:34
Speaker
child's mind or like beginner's mindset of learning from the ground up from their perspective. And do you feel that entrepreneurs need to be already in this let's say sustainability environmental space or everyone can join?
00:25:50
Speaker
Oh yeah, I think anyone with an idea can join. I think more of the merrier, especially. Like I said, we're seeing the hottest year on record. We need to act quickly and immediately. So I think anybody who has an idea to try to solve one piece of this puzzle should definitely go for it. And I think there's also never been a better time to
00:26:17
Speaker
kind of get the support and resources that you need for climate projects. So I'm hopeful and inspired, you know, daunted by how much we still have to do.
00:26:33
Speaker
Well, hey there, we came to the end of the other episode of Green New Perspective podcast. Thank you for hanging out with me and tuning into the conversation with Caroline from Renewal Mill. I really hope you enjoyed this conversation and learned about food waste reduction and food upcycling.
00:26:51
Speaker
So if you loved it, and I really hope that you did, or at least you learned something from our little talk, you can hit that subscribe button. That way, you'll be the first to know when we drop fresh episodes full of insights from climate tech space. And of course, I have to ask you not to be shy, we'd love to hear your thoughts. So leave us a comment, share your favorite moments.
00:27:16
Speaker
Or you can even suggest topics or guests that you would like to see within the series. Your input makes this podcast a two-way street and we are all about that connection. So until next time, keep those headphones on, keep those comments coming and keep being the awesome listeners that you are. Cheers, see you next time.