Read the full story at Food Engineering.
Startup Chinova Bioworks transforms mushroom stem fiber into a clean-label additive for food and beverage processing.
Category: Green business
Just Salad’s sustainability report highlights waste-free dining movement
Read the full story at Waste360.
New York-based Just Salad, known for its fast-casual restaurant concept that utilizes reusable containers, has just released its 2021 Sustainability Report.
In an introductory letter, Nick Kenner, founder and CEO, and Sandra Noonan, chief sustainability officer, placed emphasis on the company’s commitment to “everyday health and sustainability.”
Indianapolis’ urban forests worth $258 million. But they are disappearing to development.
Read the full story in the Indianapolis Star.
Indianapolis’ trees are worth a lot of money — nearly $258 million a year, according to a recent report. That’s not the price they would fetch for lumber if they were cut down, however.
Quite the opposite, in fact: That’s the value of leaving the trees standing.
The report identified more than 4,300 forested areas, defined as one acre or more of trees, across Marion County. Those pockets of green provide tremendous, yet often overlooked, benefits to residents. They help control flooding, improve air and water quality, increase property values and enhance quality of life.
But the city’s urban forests are dwindling rapidly — being erased from the map and neighborhoods by encroaching development. And every tree cut down or pushed over by a bulldozer chips away at those important benefits.
MN’s clean-energy tech enters the Shark Tank
Read the full story from Public News Service.
Government agencies are tasked with setting policies to reduce the impacts of climate change. But a new Minnesota venture aims to get more of the private sector involved, to bring locally developed “green” technology to the public.
The latest State of Climate Tech report says these startups saw a 210% increase in investments in the past year. But not all firms get to see their energy innovation succeed.
That inspired Nina Axelson to found Grid Catalyst, a nonprofit program that serves as a go-between for local green-tech companies and potential customers who can get these products onto the market.
In-store beauty refills are finally going mainstream
Read the full story at Glossy.
Offering bulk in-store beauty refills has been a longtime practice of niche zero-waste refill stores. Now, the practice is catching on among major international brands.
Supply chain sustainability & ethics as an investment
Read the full story in Sustainability Magazine.
With the increasing urgency to address climate change impacting businesses all over the world, companies are now more than ever working to incorporate sustainable and ethical best practice into all areas of their manufacturing and supply chain processes. While important for the planet, this shift is paying off for business too: a recent global study showed that 44% of companies found that sustainability efforts had improved their bottom line.
Startup transforms carrot byproduct into crackers
Read the full story at Food Business News.
Count carrot juice processing as a prime opportunity for upcycling. Up to 80% of the weight in the processing is pulp leftover, a waste byproduct often used as compost, said Beth Kennedy, who co-founded Seconds and now serves as chief executive officer of the New York-based company that uses the pulp leftover in crackers.
What goes into scaling one of Europe’s largest refill trials?
Read the full story at Packaging Europe.
Re is a reuse model developed by Beauty Kitchen, a sustainability-orientated beauty brand founded by Jo-Anne and Stuart Chidley. The Re model focuses on replacing single-use plastic packaging for FMCG by offering brands and consumers universal reuse options that can be returned or refilled at stations in retail stores across the UK. Last month, Re was awarded Innovate UK funding as part of the Smart Sustainable Plastic Packaging Challenge.
We spoke to Jo-Anna Chidley, co-founder of Beauty Kitchen and Re, and Doug Morwood, managing director at Re, about how the scheme brings together key players from across the FMCG value chain in beginning to adopt consumer-facing circular economy frameworks.
Norfolk Southern introduces online carbon calculator
Norfolk Southern has launched a new online carbon calculator to help customers measure and mitigate carbon emissions resulting from their supply chain decisions.
NS, which first introduced a carbon calculator in 2008, says its new version is more accurate because it captures the full cycle of fuel usage, with fuel consumption from locomotives applied to each railcar based on weight and distance traveled, as well as fuel used in yard and local operations, and container handling of intermodal traffic. The calculator offers fuel efficiency information for 18 railcar types and 30 commodities, plus intermodal.
Users enter the type of commodity they want to transport, shipment weight and frequency, then choose from over 75,000 origins and destinations in the U.S. The calculator provides data on estimated and avoided emissions, carbon dollars saved, highway miles avoided, trucks and cars taken off the road, and other carbon equivalents.
Sustainable food startup kicks off crowdfunding campaign
Read the full story at Food Business News.
The 2050 Co., a Seattle-based sustainable food startup, has created a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter to support the expansion of its product line. The company, which focuses on achieving zero waste, zero hunger and zero plastic by 2050, has developed a range of plant-based pasta dinners formulated with soy protein plus imperfect or surplus vegetables.
The 2050 Co. also offers smoothie mixes made with misfit fruit, which it debuted two years ago after raising more than $40,000 through the Kickstarter platform. The company uses a drying technology similar to freeze drying to remove nearly all the water in fresh produce while retaining the flavor, nutrients and fiber.
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