Waxy apples and lemons could become a thing of the past in our supermarkets as a new plant-based emulsion offers a sustainable solution to reducing food waste.
Shel-Life is a 100% plant-based coating from Chilean bio tech company PolyNatural, which aims to replace the chemical coatings we’re used to seeing — and tasting — on a host of our favorite fruits. The coating prevents fruits from dehydration and maintains their freshness for a longer period compared to untreated produce.
The vast majority of fruit coatings on the market consists of synthetic waxes that are made up of petroleum-derivatives. Now PolyNatural claims their plant-based coatings are healthier than most of their competitors, both for human consumption and for the planet.
Shel-Life forms a natural coating to the surface of fruits such as avocados, apples, pears, nectarines, plums, and citrus, and has organic certification according to OMRI and ECOCERT. Its natural solution to a longer shelf life could be a game-changer for Latin American farmers in the fight to reduce food waste sustainably.
The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization estimates that postharvest losses can reach up to 20 percent for cereals, 30 percent for dairy and fish, and 40 percent for fruit and vegetables. According to PolyNatural, its Shel-Life natural coating has prevented 273.6 tons of fruit and vegetables from being wasted, and saved 157,041 m³ of water.
So far, its products have been tested in Chile, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, the United States, Spain, Germany, and Kenya, and used by packing companies in Chile and the US. The company now wants to improve the production facilities and grow its commercial offer. PolyNatural estimates the total market potential for Shel-Life in the US as US $20 million, and globally as US $12 billion.
The African continent is rich with natural resources and an ancient farming tradition, and yet, today, 80% of Africans cannot afford a healthy diet. Undernutrition, as well as higher risk of chronic food-related illnesses such as diabetes, impact millions of people, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Only 50% of the fruit and vegetable volumes needed to meet dietary recommendations are available on the continent, let alone accessible to consumers. African countries are also some of the most vulnerable to climate change; by 2050, under a 3°C warming trajectory, the number of undernourished Africans is expected to rise from 282 million to over 350 million people.
The Nutritious Foods Financing Facility (N3F), led by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition and Incofin Investment Management, was conceived in 2017 as a source of innovative financing for agrifood small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through an impact fund. It officially launched in December 2023, focusing on agrifood SMEs in Sub-Saharan Africa, including Tanzania, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Niger, Senegal, Benin, Uganda, Mali, and Ghana (which jointly cover 54% of Africa’s population). SMEs comprise the vast majority of African food business and are an untapped resource for promoting sustainability and accessibility of nutritious food. Nutrition is arguably the development sector with the biggest imbalance between potential impact and level of investment: fewer than 1% of donor investments in development are in nutrition, but 22% of adult deaths are attributable to dietary risks, with an even greater share of child deaths attributable to undernutrition. N3F thus supports African agrifood SMEs to increase the local supply of safe, high-quality, nutritious foods (thereby improving food accessibility); to reduce environmental impact (including through decreased food losses and lower greenhouse gas emissions); and to develop climate change adaptation strategies.
The initiative consists of three main pillars. Firstly, N3F aims to be the first open-ended impact fund with consumer nutrition at its core, delivering mid to long-term financing to SMEs that provide safe and nutritious foods to local consumers in the region. Through a blended finance structure, the fund allows organizations with different objectives to invest alongside each other while achieving their own impact and return goals. N3F believes this structuring approach will reduce the overall investment risk for senior-tranche investors to attract more private capital in the fund.
Second, targeted technical assistance will be provided to investee SMEs to support their business performance, enhance the quality of their products (including nutritional value), strengthen their supply chain, improve their contribution to gender equality, and reduce their environment impact — also increasing SMEs’ ability to serve domestic markets. Finally, a monitoring, evaluation, and learning component will help to track companies’ performance and social impact, while developing metrics and approaches that can be used by others interested in nutrition-sensitive investment.
photo by N3F
N3F has developed and tested a framework and tools for sustainable nutrition investing, including an initial screening to assess potential investee SMEs according to the foods they produce as well as an audit tool to assess each SME according to five dimensions: nutrition, environment, supply chain, gender, and job creation. According to the initiative, to date they have obtained $11.5 million from donors and foundations in investments. N3F aims to prove that nutrition is investable and to share tools and lessons learned, with a global goal of influencing others to invest in nutrition in an environmentally conscious way.
Environmental sustainability has been fully integrated into N3F’s design as one of five impact areas to be assessed throughout the investment cycle. For instance, N3F will assess its investees’ plans or processes to reduce natural resource use; reduce carbon footprint; expand renewable energy practices and recycling programs; address food waste/food loss; and reduce plastic packaging pollution, among others. Each SME engaged with the N3F will have its climate and environmental contributions assessed at two stages in the process, first at the investment decision point and later during the monitoring and reporting on the impact of the fund. These assessments will also be used by the technical assistance arm of the N3F to ensure that SMEs have a sound climate agenda.
A global coalition of business and political leaders is powering up to reduce loss and waste right across the food system by 2030.
Champions 12.3 is a powerhouse of international influencers and thought leaders from governments, international organizations, research institutions, and farmer groups. Using their clout and connections to recruit partners and drive change, they’re out to inspire a whole new ambition about rethinking food waste at every step of the journey from spade to spoon.
«Each year, Australian industry and households discard an astonishing 7.6 million tons of food, and the majority of it ends up in landfill,» said Dr Steven Lapidge, Creator and CEO of Fight Food Waste Ltd, as he was invited to become the first Champion 12.3 from Australasia. «This invitation means that Australia will have a seat at the table working alongside other leaders in the global fight against food waste to divert it from landfill, so we can save money, help people, improve food security and safeguard the environment.»
The «12.3» in the name refers to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal, or SDG, 12.3 which calls for halving global food loss and waste throughout the food chain by 2030. According to Champions 12.3 co-secretariat World Resources Institute, if food loss and waste were a country, it would be the third-highest emitter of greenhouse gases after the US and China. An area of land larger than China is used to grow food that people don’t eat, while a quarter of all freshwater used by agriculture goes to food that becomes waste. More than 800 million people are currently food insecure while more than 1 billion tons of food is lost or wasted each year. Now, Champions 12.3, armed with moral outrage and super-connections, are on a mission to slash the rate of food loss and waste in half.
And with the deadline of 2030, the clock is ticking; the Champions are already showing us what bossing it can really achieve in their own boardrooms, their relationships with partners and the media, and even how they can influence government policy.
Champions use the «Target-Measure-Act» approach to influence their peers, supply chains, customers, and policy makers. But they also walk the talk; their initiatives include the 10×20×30 project, which involves ten of the world’s largest food retailers to sign up twenty of their priority food suppliers to cut food loss and waste by 50% by 2030.
With the support of Champions 12.3, the African Union has already developed its continental post-harvest loss reduction strategy. Champions 12.3 has helped the World Farmers’ Organization to design a «Digital Dustbin» which connects farmers in Africa who have surplus harvest with companies, food banks, and others in need of additional food. Champions 12.3 has even worked with IKEA to become the first major company in world to reach 50% reduction in food waste.
Pasteurising seeds in hot steam could be the farmer’s answer to controlling harmful fungi, bacteria, and insects without the use of environmentally damaging chemicals.
Clean seed is a global issue; seed-borne diseases are a serious threat to farmers and world food supply. But in most cases, seeds are treated with chemicals that can harm the environment and biodiversity, and threaten grain and vegetable harvests and thereby farmers’ livelihoods.
Plant protection chemicals may be designed to kill specific pests, but they can also affect any other life form that comes in contact with them. The chemicals can enter the food chain, leading to long-term detrimental effects. Many pesticides are dangerous to life in waterways due to agricultural runoff. Even in certified organic farming, natural pesticides, which are widely used, can inadvertently cause damage to benign insect life and fungal spores, which affects the entire biodiversity of the soil.
About a third of the world’s soil has already been degraded by chemical-heavy agricultural interventions, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). ThermoSeed claims to offer an economically competitive, environmentally friendly alternative which, if spread to new markets throughout the world, could substantially increase food supply and at the same time decrease the use of methods hazardous to humans and nature.
ThermoSeed pasteurizes the seed with hot humid air, and could increase harvests of grain and legumes worldwide by using this unique hot steam method of processing to eliminate toxic microorganisms such as fungi, bacteria, and harmful insects.
photo by ThermoSeed
The method already dominates the seed market in Scandinavia where most cereals are treated. ThermoSeed says that field trials there have shown an increase in harvest around 5-10 percent. In Sweden, ThermoSeed-treated seeds already have a market share of 40 percent and in Norway, 60 percent. ThermoSeed’s equipment for treating seed is now sold in four other European countries and in the US. Within the next 10 years, the company believes it will have established ThermoSeed around the world. In developing countries, the increase in harvests is even more important, according to the company; rice trials in Mali have indicated an increase in harvests by 27 percent.
Complying with the EU directive of integrated pest management, ThermoSeed sets a standard in providing a good working environment for workers in seed plants and farms with no exposure to chemicals, increasing food safety, and limiting waste by ensuring unused seed can be used direct for human consumption and for feeding farm animals.
With over 20 years of contribution to the development of more sustainable food production methods, the Swedish company is already treating rice against nematodes in the US and Italy, and is officially approved in Japan and Mali. It believes that expansion into new markets would have a massive impact in climate, environment, and health.
How can we tell where our fish comes from? Can we trust our supermarkets or our favorite restaurants to buy responsibly on our behalf? And how can they be sure of the source of their fish?
According to an analysis of 44 studies by The Guardian, 40 percent of the seafood we eat is not what is advertised. And with more than a third of global fish stocks currently not within biologically sustainable levels, we all need a little help.
Eachmile Technologies is developing apps which are set to transform the global seafood and agriculture supply chains from fishers and farmers to fork. mFish is a set of mobile applications for fishing and aquaculture that educates fishers and connects them to valuable information like weather, fish handling, sustainability improvement programs, and to one another to share market prices, enabling them to make better decisions based on sustainable practices. And that means that it comes with the option for a clear trail all the way to our plates, if the stakeholders along the supply chain choose to use this service. mFish-Trace is a blockchain-enabled application using Fishcoin tokens specifically designed to incentivize data capture at the first link from the fishers and fish farmers who catch and harvest our seafood. The initiative claims this data helps to ensure that seafood is legal, reported, regulated, safe, authentic, and responsibly produced.
photo by EachMile
mFish aims to improve the lives of fishermen and their communities with practical solutions via the app. Many of the world’s fishers are small-scale fishers and often don’t have a digital identity nor a bank account, let alone ownership of the resource they and so many of us rely upon. mFish helps to start their digital identity journeys, rewards them for sharing their harvest data leading to improved management, and can pave the way to resource ownership — thus incentivizing sustainable fishing practices. This data thread can connect fishers and farmers to consumers and lead to demand pull effects for more sustainable and responsible industries.
Free and Multilingual Eachmile’s mFarmer app, which uses the same principles as mFish, was also developed for small-scale producers such as smallholder palm-oil farmers within Unilever’s supply chain. Both applications are multi-lingual, operable in 2G environments, and free of data charges via Facebook’s FreeBasics platform. mFish is available in ten languages, responding to the nature and common locations of fisheries.
Eachmile is also working with chefs from some of the world’s top hotels including the Hyatt and Hilton groups of hotels to source high-quality, sustainable seafood. With better fish from healthier seas feeding both fisher income and the diner’s endless appetite for sustainable seafood, it could be the end of the line for overfishing.
Living on a farm might sound idyllic to some — but it’s also a full-time job, a sun-up till sun-down non-stop litany of logistics. Smallholder farmers have to wear multiple hats, and are beholden to fluctuating market demands and an increasingly erratic climate. Many smallholder farmers, particularly in developing countries, live in poverty, face food and nutrition insecurity, and are barely able to keep their families afloat. They rely on rainfed agriculture and traditional marketing channels to sell their produce, which tends to be more abundant during the rainy season resulting in market floods, postharvest losses, and low income. This highlights the need for functional market solutions to prevent exploitation by middlemen and ensure better income for farmers to meet competing needs such as family health care and education.
Shamba Calendar was designed to help smallholder farmers in rural areas with agricultural productivity and profitability. It is a demand-driven digital platform that provides an assured market to smallholder farmers so that they can focus on production. Going beyond the business-as-usual model, it fixes AI-determined market prices for produce, which are then graded at standardized prices to ensure zero food loss due to quality. As the primary beneficiaries, the smallholder farmers have year-round access to the centrally positioned Shamba Connector that allows them to sell their produce to interested parties. As a one-stop shop, the Shamba calendar provides access to value chain-specific agronomic information including climate-smart agricultural practices integrating indigenous crops for climate resilience.
According to the FSPN-Africa, previous iterations of data-driven apps did not address the low rates of digital literacy and online know-how for many smallholder farmers. In response to this, the Shamba Calendar supports farmers through tech savvy Shamba Connectors and Lead Farmers to bridge digital divide at farm and market levels. At the farm level, smallholder farmers organized into groups of 15 to 20 members have access to digital extension services through the Lead Farmers. The trained Lead Farmers ensure that all participating farmers are registered with the digital platform and facilitating value chain-specific in-person training and farm demonstrations.
photo by Shamba Calendar
At the market level, Shamba Connectors aggregate, grade, and enlist smallholder farmers’ produce on the Shamba Calendar’s agricultural marketplace for purchase for ease of redistribution. With this approach, smallholder farmers access diverse market opportunities digitally despite the low digital literacy. Upon registration, information on the crop variety, inputs used, quantity of produce, and percentage of surplus available for sale vs. household consumption is collected to achieve food traceability and inform future research on suitable seed and input recommendations for maximum yield with minimum environmental footprint. One of the biggest environmental drains on the food supply chain is loss of food because of lack of reliable market. Reducing food loss at farm level through market availability will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Any surplus food that does not reach the market is refined into organic manure and used in the farms to improve soil health — a promising substitute for fertilizers.
The goal of Shamba is to enable smallholder farmers in Africa is to adopt nutrition sensitive agriculture and climate smart agriculture, and access diverse agricultural markets for health and wealth. By working out the market demand, it enables smallholder farmers to maximize quality food production throughout the year. And smallholder farmers have access to more digital agricultural information such as weather, quality seeds, inputs, and agronomic information. With the click of a button, farmers are able to sell their produce for a better price, with less waste — and everyone leaves happy.
About 27% of the Earth’s land surface is covered by towering peaks that reach towards the sky. While certainly majestic, mountains are also an essential source of freshwater, energy, and food, not just for an estimated 1.1 billion mountain people, but also for billions more living downstream. Yet mountain areas face numerous challenges such as poverty, climate change, deforestation, and limited access to resources — and 90% of mountain dwellers live in developing countries, where poverty and food insecurity are prevalent. More than 608 million mountain family farms produce around 80% of the world’s food in monetary value terms. These farmers have adapted to the harsh terrain through centuries of indigenous methods of small-scale, low-carbon footprint, crop diverse agricultural practices.
The Mountain Partnership Products (MPP) initiative was created to uplift mountain farmers, support their work, and ensure a better, more equitable future. Working with mountain communities in Latin America, Central America, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia (including Bolivia, India, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Nepal, Panama, Peru and the Philippines), MPP promotes healthy, organic, and locally sourced products grown and produced by small-holder farmers, while ensuring they receive fair compensation for their work. The result is a holistic answer to the economic and environmental challenges facing these communities.
Developed in collaboration with Slow Food, the MPP uses a «narrative» label to communicate each product’s origin, cultivation, processing, nutritional value, and cultural significance, enabling consumers to make a more informed purchase and producers to sell at a premium price. Consumers can recognize mountain products in the marketplace, and traditional techniques and products can thrive. The initiative’s aim is to improve mountain communities’ livelihoods and local economies while preserving traditional knowledge and agrobiodiversity by strengthening the value chain and creating marketing techniques for high-quality mountain products. Currently 45 products from eight countries proudly bear the MPP label.
MPP works directly with farming communities. Mountain farming, mainly undertaken by family farmers due to the unique challenges of mountainous terrain, plays a vital role in ensuring household food security. Indigenous and local populations possess valuable knowledge, traditions, and cultural practices that contribute to effective land management strategies. One of the core pillars of MPP is to provide support to producers’ organizations through capacity building and training. In Bolivia, for example, seven producer organizations (200 producers) were involved in MPP training activities: 160 women farmers were trained to improve the Melipona bee honey value chain and 40 farmers were trained on the selection and classification of seeds, pest control, harvesting and storage of black amaranth.
photo by Mountain Partnership Products
According to the organization, they have worked with some 18,000 farmers, 60% of whom are women. The labelling scheme includes actions to improve the entire value chain, with a specific focus on marketing strategies and the capacity development in communities while helping to safeguard traditional knowledge and mountain biodiversity. MPP notes that most producers reported significant increases in market demand, selling price, and production after adopting the MPP label. For example, Peruvian blueberry jam and golden berry jam producers increased their sales by 33 percent and 49 percent respectively in the last year. Soured from the highest peaks and enjoyed all the way down to sea level, MPP is helping consumers make well informed shopping decisions to help farmers and promote a better, more sustainable future for all.
Battered and fried, tossed in mayonnaise, cooked in sauce or served chilled — around the world, people consume shrimp with aplomb. We now eat more seafood than at any other point in history, and shrimp — along with high-value seafood and fish like seabass and salmon — are some of the most in-demand products. But this current trend in aquaculture creates plenty of problems. In 2020, 5.6 million tons of globally farmed shrimp consumed 8.4 million tons of high protein feed, creating an annual carbon footprint of 40 million tons of CO2. That means that 8.4 million tons of feed was required to produce 3.36 million tons of edible protein. This unsustainable use of high energy feedstuffs in intensive aquaculture is fueling global warming, and increases risk of disease, eutrophication, loss of biodiversity, and degradation of habitats and soil, further overshooting the planetary boundaries.
SELVA SHRIMP demonstrates the true potential of blue food and promotes growing aquatic species without feed, fertilizers, or chemicals — creating nature-based and community-inclusive food harvesting systems within the planetary boundaries. Being a private-sector initiative which uses value chain promotion and community empowerment, SELVA SHRIMP incentivizes mangrove restoration by local smallholder communities in Southeast Asia. The program works with farmers, local authorities, conservation NGOs, and seafood processors to promote regenerative, nature-based raising of shrimp and other low trophic aquatic species in combination with restoration and conservation of mangroves. Shrimp, crab, mollusks, and filter feeding fish are raised by smallholder farmers in intertidal zones where they convert solar energy into healthy, high-quality proteins. Harvested organic seafood creates a stable, low-risk and high value revenue stream for coastal communities and incentivizes continuous restoration of mangroves at large scale.
Since its initiation in 2008, SELVA SHRIMP has been working around three main pillars: Firstly, the program entails specific standards for farm level improvements and mangrove restoration for farmers; secondly, SELVA SHRIMP addresses chain of custody and traceability along the entire supply chain; and thirdly, the initiative undertakes third party certification by organic aquaculture standards. The direct anchoring of Selva Shrimp’s conservation component into local and global seafood value chains creates a co-management framework to transition degraded intertidal seafood farming zones into regenerative, nature-positive blue food harvesting systems. According to the initiative, restoring mangroves and promoting better aquaculture practices results in increased yields and more consistent revenues for farmers.
Photo by Selva Shrimp
Today, the organization claims to be the largest organic aquaculture program worldwide, with 4,500 farmers participating in Vietnam and Indonesia, encompassing a surface of more than 20,000 ha in its verification program, with 13,500 ha of mangroves successfully restored by farmers and local authorities. After 15 years of experience and proof of concept, the program believes that it now has a blueprint for creating a network of restorative blue food mangrove clusters across Asia, with the potential to convert more than 250,000 ha of degraded intertidal zones into thriving, nature-based blue food harvesting systems — possibly able to sequester 14-15 million tons of carbon and harvest a surplus of 100,000 tons of high quality seafood, while contributing to mitigating climate change, fostering biodiversity, and supplying nutritious food to local and global consumer markets.
SELVA SHRIMP has already been making significant strides in the communities they work with in Southern Vietnam and Eastern Kalimantan. According to the initiative, to date, the participating farmers are harvesting 8,500 tons of climate-smart seafood and realize a direct income of $60 million at very low investment risk, as there are no farming inputs required. There are also benefits for the consumer: Naturally produced, organic seafood does not contain residues and contaminants, as there are no external inputs, additives or chemicals applied. And at the same time, the health of participating farmers and families is safeguarded as they are not exposed to potentially hazardous chemicals and pesticides. Lower trophic seafood species such as shrimp, crab, and bivalve mollusks will have an important role to play in our future food basket. What we need to establish now are more environmentally friendly, climate-smart and socially-inclusive seafood harvesting systems, and SELVA SHRIMP leads the way.
In India, small-scale farmers are the backbone of agriculture, growing nearly 50% of the country’s food. Despite their outsized role, they represent some of the poorest segments of society, with a line of work that is at the forefront (and thus, mercy) of the climate crisis. Indian farmers often lack access to agricultural information and quality inputs to increase their income and climate resiliency, resulting in an overdependence on expensive and climate-poor energy solutions to sustain their activities. In particular, small-scale farmers over-rely on fossil fuel and overuse chemical inputs, which leads to high input costs, crop yields 50% lower than potential, and low and irregular income.
Oorja’s initiative replaces diesel used along the agricultural value chain with affordable farming services powered by solar energy to help farmers take full advantage of the yearly growing cycle. Roughly 30 million farmers in India use diesel-powered groundwater pumps, accounting for 12% of India’s diesel consumption. This is both environmentally destructive and operationally expensive; fuel for energy accounts for 20-40% of total input costs for farmers — an enormous burden to shoulder. Through a community-based pay-per-use business model, Oorja allows farmers to transition to economically viable and environmentally sustainable agriculture.
photo by Oorja – farmer at Oonati irrigation site
Oorja owns, finances, operates, and maintains decentralized solar infrastructure at the farm level and sells irrigation and milling services (which are all sourced from domestic manufacturers) to smallholder farmers on a pay-per-use basis. To incentivize their services, they offer affordable tariffs that are up to 60% lower than diesel, thus helping farmers transition to renewable energy. By removing the entry barrier of upfront tech acquisition costs, Oorja allows even the poorest farmers to access «productive-use» appliances. In addition to providing services, Oorja also has an educational component to their work. The organization provides climate-smart advisory to enable farmers to boost yields, engage in new growing seasons, diversify cropping patterns, grow high-value crops, reduce chemical input, and use water judiciously. They do this through in-person training with expert agronomists, who help farmers learn and adopt innovative approaches to climate-smart farming techniques.
Their B2C (business to consumer) model is operational in six districts in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar states of India; in 4.5 years, they have reached 26,000+ smallholders. According to the initiative, 67% of their customers no longer use diesel pumps, abating over 2,000 tons of CO2 emissions. Oorja also addresses another issue in agriculture, the overuse of freshwater. According to the initiative, farmers who undergo their agronomy training now use up to 30% less water for irrigation than previously. For both the environment and farmer’s pockets, it’s a win.
Buckets of foul smelling, curdled milk could be the inspiration for a brand new, fully compostable type of packaging.
The global amount of industrial agricultural waste is staggering. We trash roughly 1.4 billion tons of food each year, approximately one-third of all food produced. That amounts to around 1 trillion USD in revenue losses. And that’s without the carbon cost of making and transporting the food that ends up in landfill.
But Robert Luo, CEO and founder of the material science company MiTerro, has come up with a solution made from milk protein inspired by visits to his uncle’s dairy farm in North-western China.
Luo, now a Forbes Under 30 scholar and Global Shakers Sustainable Fashion Innovator of 2019, was puzzled by the amount of spoiled milk left to waste in this otherwise efficient and well-organized farm, and rose to the challenge set by his uncle to find a solution. Then a student at the University of California, he started researching the make-up of milk waste, and found a way to repurpose it. On a molecular level, the protein structures of wool and milk are not dissimilar, and Luo and his childhood friend, Zhuang, figured out a way to mimic the wool protein structure to form a bio-based, water-degradable, home compostable packaging material that is cheaper than the conventional plastic. According to MiTerro, this material produces 80% less CO2 emissions.
Using the endless supply of agricultural waste and byproducts from the plant and dairy industries, MiTerro is now on a mission to replace all the world’s petroleum-based, single-use plastic and paper-based materials with its alternative packaging.
Bio-based detergent pods – photo by MiTerro
Luo believes that he can address two of the biggest problems in the world by turning dairy, stem grain, or soybean waste into plastic alternative packaging material.
Designers have already tried working with milk fibers blended with petroleum-based acrylic. But MiTerro has removed the fossil fuels and claims to have created a totally sustainable product from milk waste. Spinning it into fabric first, the company worked with farmers and food companies in the US and China to fashion milk shirts, underwear, and facemasks. The media went crazy.
Now they’ve expanded the theory to include natural polymers from other agricultural waste such as beer, potatoes, and paper pulp, creating a unique prototype compostable material that is 20-40% cheaper than other bio-based products. And as it’s water-based, it leaves no microplastics in the oceans.
The material’s strong water and oxygen barrier and heat-sealable capacity mean that it can package fresh produce, dry food, fashion, cleaning products, and technological devices. Global corporations from Georgia Pacific and SPB to Budweiser and Unilever and Lipton, are lining up to test out its potential.
