4 minute read | Oct. 31, 2023
4 Sustainable Food Tech Companies We’re Following Right Now
Embracing and supporting food tech innovation can play a vital role in shaping a more sustainable future for our food industry and the world at large.
Embracing and supporting food tech innovation can play a vital role in shaping a more sustainable future for our food industry and the world at large.
You know what we love more than a delicious meal? The knowledge that it was a sustainable one. And as food tech continues to disrupt the food industry, we’re keeping our eyes on these four sustainable food tech start-ups.
Food tech is exactly what it sounds like: It’s the intersection of food and technology.
In practice, that looks like companies leveraging science, engineering, and technology to improve the many facets of today’s food system.
The world has been revolutionized over and over by technology, and the food system is one industry that is catching up.
And just in time, too: The global population is expected to rise to 9.1 billion by 2050, with the global food system facing major challenges, such as ingredient sourcing, supply chain issues, and distribution.
The way we currently produce food at scale simply is not effective. In fact, currently, the global food system accounts for 21–37% of yearly greenhouse gas emissions.
You know us: we’re big on sustainability. Which is why we’ve always got our eyes peeled for companies that are finding new and innovative ways to help further sustainability, especially if it means ensuring a stable food supply for the future.
Below, we rounded up four companies in the sustainable food tech space that we think are killing it right now.
Rebellyous is on a mission to make the perfect chicken nugget. Just without the chicken!
This team of animal-loving engineers uses protein-rich plant ingredients to make nuggets, patties, and tenders while simultaneously creating entirely new and better tools for making them.
This is because most plant-based meat is currently made using off-the-shelf meat processing equipment, which isn’t designed for the unique properties of plant-based protein.
So, they’re developing their own patented technology! And their system, Mock Two, is not only better for those operating it, it’s cleaner and more efficient! In fact, it uses 80% less energy, and requires less labour than traditional meat processing equipment.
Why this is important:
Who doesn’t love a chicken nugget? In our opinion, they should comprise their own food group. And even better if they’re ethically and sustainably made!
All jokes aside, what Rebellyous is doing is important because they aren’t just producing a sustainable food product, they’re paving the way for plant-made meat to be produced at scale, which could revolutionize the plant-based meat industry. If you want to hear more about Rebellyous, listen in on our interview with founder, Christie Lagally.
Lomi is the world’s very first Smart Waste™ kitchen composter. This electronic kitchen composter sits right on your kitchen counter and makes it incredibly easy to turn waste into compost in as little as a few hours.
Typically, food waste breaks down in landfills anaerobically and releases methane, a greenhouse gas with 80x the warming power of carbon dioxide.
Lomi, on the other hand, transforms waste into a natural fertilizer – in as little as 3-5 hours! By breaking down food scraps into nutrient-rich soil, which leads to easier waste disposal and reduced waste, Lomi can reduce your organic kitchen waste by 80% – which also reduces your household’s carbon footprint. When used in combination with soil to grow plants, nutrients like carbon get stored in plant matter instead of released as carbon dioxide.
Lomi was created by Canadian-based tech company Pela, who created the world’s first compostable phone case in 2011. In 2018, Pela HQ expanded with the goal to develop a solution to food waste.
In 2021, Lomi was launched, and since then, Lomi users have prevented as much as 17 million pounds of food waste from entering landfills.
Why this is important:
In just the U.S. alone, 43% of food waste happens at the household level. It ends up in landfills, which are one of three main sources of human methane pollution, along with livestock and the oil and gas industry.
The EPA says methane is at least 28x more powerful than CO2 at trapping heat and making climate change happen.
Reducing methane emissions can help to reduce the atmospheric warming effect. And while we are not advocating that climate change action should fall on the shoulders of individual consumers, who make up a small percentage of emissions compared to major corporations and the 1% (hint hint, Amazon, Meta, private jet-users), we do believe that anyone can make an impact.
And that’s why what Lomi is doing is so important. By make composting easier at home, you avoid those emissions, as well as those generated by the waste hauling and landfill management processes.
In the infant formula industry, cow’s milk is used as the basis for almost all infant formula.
But cow’s milk alone doesn’t provide all of the nutritional value infants require and isn’t efficiently absorbed and digested due to its high protein levels, so all formulas have added vitamins, minerals and fats to make them nutritionally complete.
1 in 6 babies have adverse or allergic reactions to traditional cow milk-based formulas. And hypoallergenic formulas often have a smell and taste that some babies struggle with. So it can be a challenge finding a formula that works for your baby.
That’s where Harmony comes along.
Harmony Baby Nutrition is a food tech company that uses biotechnology to produce breast milk components that are bioidentical to those in human breast milk. They use these components to create a formula that is animal-free, non-GMO, and hypoallergenic because they’ve entirely removed dairy from the equation.
As well, their formula is created via a process known as precision fermentation, which not only creates human breast milk components but also eliminates the need for dairy-farmed milk completely – making the formula more environmentally friendly.
This has the added benefit of significantly reducing carbon emissions that are otherwise produced in cow’s milk-based formula.
Why this is important:
The traditional process of using cow’s milk to create formula is detrimental to our environment. For instance, the production of 1 kg of baby formula is estimated to contribute around 4 kg of CO2 toward climate change.
The technology Harmony is using to create human breast milk components has been around for decades, but Harmony is the first one to apply this safe and well known technology to baby nutrition.
By eliminating cow’s milk from the production of infant formula, Harmony generates up to 82% fewer greenhouse gases than traditional formula. That’s huge!
Bee-free honey sounds a bit like an oxymoron, but this technology is revolutionizing honey production for a kinder world where humans and bees can thrive, with MeliBio at the forefront.
The honey industry and modern beekeeping practices have made significant impacts on both honey bees and native bee populations.
Quick context: The honeybees, as we currently know them, were imported from Europe. They’re the only pollinator that produces honey (native North American bee species – like most bee species – do not produce honey) and they help pollinate about one third of the food that we consume.
And while that’s great for agriculture, it’s detrimental to the environment, as high densities of honey bee colonies create competition for native pollinators, who are crucial to the ecosystem.
This, along with the constant influx of climate change challenges, pesticides, and habitat destruction, has accelerated the decline of native bee species who are integral to pollination.
MeliBio is a food tech company that is out to help solve this very problem. They leverage a technology that harnesses the power of science and innovation to create honey – without using bees.
Their goal is to address the problems with commercial honey production while providing a stable supply chain, removing cost volatility, and introducing predictability in the honey industry, all while creating more sustainable alternatives to bee-made honey.
Using an innovative, science-driven approach, MeliBio is able to create honey that mimics traditional honey’s taste, texture, and nutritional benefits without the negative impacts on native bee populations.
Why this is important:
On paper, it makes sense that if bee populations are declining, it would seem that more bees in more places will help. But efforts to increase the number of honey bees on the landscape actually does more harm than good by generating competition for native bees, especially when you add in a changing climate and a growing human population.
MeliBio’s proprietary approach to producing honey without bees means they’re helping protect native bee populations, which are so important to our ecosystem.
Native bees co-evolved with our native plants and often have behavioral adaptations that make them better pollinators than honey bees. Plus, honey bees sometimes contribute little or nothing to pollination (honey bees groom their pollen and carry it in neat pollen cakes, where it’s less likely to contact the stigma of another flower and pollinate it),
MeliBio’s approach allows them to produce honey sustainably and ethically, without exploiting bees or putting pressures on wild and native species. That means this food tech company is able to produce more affordable, more accessible honey at a lower scale.
With the increasing global population, resource constraints, climate change, and environmental concerns, finding sustainable solutions for food production, distribution, and consumption is becoming crucial. The four food tech companies we rounded up offer some incredibly innovative approaches and technologies that can revolutionize the way we produce, process, and consume food.
We’re excited to keep watching this field and its players to see what kinds of positive impacts they continue to make. All of us play a part in sustainability. And embracing and supporting food tech innovations can play a vital role in shaping a more sustainable future for our food industry and the world at large.
Want to discover more? We sat down with Jeremy Lang, Founder and VP of Sustainability at Pela, and creator of the Lomi countertop composter. Listen in on our podcast!