LEADERSHIP -
I came to Colorado, like millions before me, for the mountains, the active, sustainable lifestyle — and, of course, the beer. Coloradoans love their beer. So when I was invited up to Fort Collins to check out the water-saving initiatives of a local brewery I jumped at the opportunity. “Which one?” I wondered. Fort Collins is home to more than 15 breweries (roughly 1 for every 10,000 residents), amongst the highest concentrations for any city in America. New Belgium is a certified B Corp — that’d make sense. Or maybe Odell?
PRESS RELEASE -
Panera Bread is proud to share its progress in reducing confinement and antibiotics across its U.S. Panera Bread® and St. Louis Bread Co.® bakery-cafe menus.Highlights include:Laying Hens (Eggs): 100% cage-free by 2020Pigs (Pregnant sows): 100% gestation-crate free in 2015Poultry: 100% of chicken and 100% of roasted turkey in sandwiches and salads raised without antibiotics in 2015Beef Cattle: 89% grass fed, free range in 2015
BEHAVIOR CHANGE -
What will our food system look like 10 years from now? According to a new report from the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a sustainable, secure UK food system will depend on industry and government action to reframe issues and innovate. The waste-reduction charity predicts there will be new business opportunities in protein supply, data-enabled technology, and food designed for nutritional requirements.
SUPPLY CHAIN -
Here in Idaho, we’re the number one barley-producing US state. But how much of that barley (and the profits from it) remains in the state, or even in the region?This is the type of question advocates for sustainability ask. We want to buy local and help sustain our local businesses. We want fresh farm produce delivered to our local businesses—such as Co-ops—where we buy the produce and help these farmers grow more crops. The local business profits, the farmer profits, and hopefully, our health is bolstered by environmentally conscious growing practices the farmer employs.At first blush this might not be obvious, but the barley question is a big deal. Here’s why:
WASTE NOT -
Food waste has proved to be a persistent global challenge despite numerous efforts to reduce it from stakeholders throughout the value chain, from corporates, to non-profits, to startups. At the same time, it may not be obvious to business owners and employees what they can do to be reducing food waste in their daily operations.
MARKETING AND COMMS -
Soon consumers in the US will come a lot closer to knowing what's in the food they buy thanks to a new standard being introduced by the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA). SmartLabel was created to meet the public’s desire for more information about the products they use and consume, and Hershey is the first brand to adopt it.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
It’s difficult to swallow the contradictory statistic that 50 million Americans are food insecure while 40 percent of the food produced in the U.S. is wasted, according to the NRDC. Food recovery entrepreneur and advocate, Dana Frasz — founder of Oakland, Calif.-based food-recovery non-profit Food Shift— suggests that the sustainable food movement could use a new recipe. Those working on hunger should not just look at providing food, but how they can create jobs.
PRESS RELEASE -
In much of the world, we take rice for granted. We’ve got canisters of it in our cupboards, and it’s readily available in our stores. Indeed, we can take it or leave it as part of our daily meals.But for billions of people around the globe, rice is the only thing standing between a full stomach and going to bed hungry. For millions of farmers, it’s the only difference between a decent wage and destitution – and the only thing keeping their children alive. But with the world’s population expanding towards ten billion in the next 40 years, we face a very real threat: there may not be enough rice to go around.
CHEMISTRY, MATERIALS & PACKAGING -
This week, Nestlé announced it is the newest member of the How2Recycle Label Program. Selected Nestlé USA and Purina® brands will use the How2Recycle label to help communicate to the public how to recycle their packaging.The How2Recycle label is a project of GreenBlue’s Sustainable Packaging Coalition (SPC), developed to provide clear and concise on-package recyclability information and keep recoverable materials out of landfills. The brands join over 40 How2Recycle member companies using the label on packaging.
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE -
This summer, JetBlue announced New York City-based Hot Bread Kitchen — a social enterprise that builds lasting economic security for foreign-born and low-income women by introducing them to professional opportunities in the culinary industry - as the first winner of its “BlueBud" business mentoring program.
WASTE NOT -
As we prepare for the innumerable resource challenges of supporting a population expected to top 9 billion in the next 35 years, it is simply unacceptable to continue wasting food. Organizations large and small are now focusing a variety of efforts on eliminating food waste.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Despite recent food-saving innovations such as FreshPaper, efforts to promote “ugly produce” and industry-wide commitments to reduce food waste, millions of tons of food are still discarded every year.
COLLABORATION -
Mars has signed a new partnership agreement with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to help make food safer across the globe, with a specific focus on the developing regions of the global South.The partners will do this by promoting international standards for food safety and quality, improving food safety management to reduce illness caused by unsafe food and improving global access to information. The plan is to share our expertise and data, helping the FAO to identify food safety issues early, as well as to develop tools that will help support food safety programs in developing countries.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Today, Target announced a new collaboration with MIT’s Media Lab and global design firm IDEO that will explore the future of food. The work will focus on areas such as urban farming, food transparency and authenticity, supply chain and health. Target says the goal of the multi-year collaboration is to push the edges of science, technology and design to give people better control over their food choices and help them to eat healthier.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Food production dominates fresh water use and is a primary driving force for soil and biodiversity loss – and food demand is on the rise. The good news is that while faced with such challenges and often considered to be lagging on sustainability, the food and beverage industry stands out as most-improved in a 2015 survey.
CLEANTECH -
Equator Kenya, a food-processing company that produces African Bird’s Eye Chilies for export, has joined the Business Call to Action (BCtA) with a commitment to provide climate-smart technologies, training and market linkages to 8,000 smallholder farmers along the Kenyan coast.This business is designed to reduce the crop risks posed by climate change, which will help increase incomes among the farmers — 6,000 of whom are women — as well as improve crop yields and quality.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
Sustainable food startup Impossible Foods recently raised $108 million in Series D funding, bringing their total funding to date to $183 million. The Redwood City, California-based company is creating meat and dairy alternatives from plant ingredients that are remarkably similar to the real thing.
WASTE NOT -
It seems increasingly likely that certain types of worms could be an amazing solution to our plastic problem — and that we may eat them and their cousins afterwards.Last week, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) published a risk profile to address the potential biological, chemical and environmental hazards as well as allergenicity associated with the use of farmed insects as food and feed.
PRODUCT, SERVICE & DESIGN INNOVATION -
JetBlue Airways and TERRA® Real Vegetable Chips today revealed the T5 Farm – a blue potato farm and produce garden at Terminal 5 (T5) at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport. An experiment in ‘farm-to-air’ innovation, the farm will promote New York agriculture and enhance the JetBlue customer experience with more green space.
WASTE NOT -
Today, Nestlé USA released its second Creating Shared Value (CSV) report, which details the company’s progress against 27 commitments set in 2013 related to nutrition, health and wellness, environmental impact and water use, social impact, and responsible sourcing. Nestlé has added a new commitment to achieve zero waste to landfill status in all factories by 2020; its global CSV report for 2014 was released in March.Among the highlights: