Garbage you can eat probably makes you think of dumpster diving freegans, searching the trash for quality food. But these days, there are a lot of new companies using food waste to make products, according to a new report on the industry from ReFED. The report tracks trends in the food waste biz and it shows back in 2011, there were only 11 companies doing it and today there are 64 companies selling “upcycled” food products, like ugly-fruit jam and stale-bread beer.
These companies are saving thousands of pounds of food from landfills, which is a huge source of greenhouse gas. And they’re making money using stuff people were throwing away anyway. They just have to convince customers that “food waste” isn’t a gross ingredient.
San Francisco start-up ReGrained started when co-founder Dan Kurzrock noticed all the nutritionally valuable “spent grain” leftover when he home-brewed beer. So he and his partner spent years researching what they could use it for, and last year they came out with a line of snack bars made from almonds, oats, quinoa, and grains they get from urban brewers.
Erika Lamb started Seconds First, which makes fish cakes from “ugly” produce and “underappreciated” seafood, like dogfish and skate wing. She sources directly from local farmers and is determined to keep her prices low.
Love Beets is a company that takes beet scraps and turns them into beet flour - but before you say yuck - know that they use that beet flour for yummy stuff like red velvet cake!
Source: Washington Post