San Francisco, California-based regenerative food tech company
Treasure8 is seeking funds to help propel it on
its mission — to revolutionize how food is managed along supply chains, and
address the global challenges of food waste, nutrition and climate
change along the way.
“The world is waking up to the fact that we’re cooking ourselves — there is a
need for solutions that are not some incremental growth, year after year; they
need to come right out the gate as a revolutionary, step-change function,”
Timothy Childs, Treasure8’s co-CEO, told Sustainable Brands in a recent
interview.
Childs — who previously founded Berkeley, Calif.-based conscious chocolate
company TCHO Chocolate in 2006 — founded Treasure8 more
than six years ago, though it has only recently gone public with what the team
believes is a game-changing model. At the center is Treasure8’s core technology
— a patented dehydration tool, built in cooperation with the USDA and UC
Davis, that they call Sauna, which
can fully dehydrate fruits and vegetables without stripping them of nutrients,
using far less energy than existing technologies. It also, as I verified during
a visit to the company’s facility on Treasure Island, produces far superior
dried snacks than what you’ll currently find on shelves across the US.
GroundRules dehydrated beet chips | Image credit: Treasure8
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Food waste has been a key issue for those in the agricultural industry for some
time now, since it was first recognized as an issue earlier this decade. The
figures are staggering: According
to the Food and
Agriculture Organization, 1.3 billion metric tons of food is wasted globally
each year. Here in the United States, an estimated 26 percent of all food
produced is wasted. Moreover, if food waste were a country, it would be the
third-largest
emitter
in the world after China and the US, due to methane emissions produced from
food in landfills and transportation emissions from wasted food.
Treasure8’s approach to making a dent in the issue is sourcing what would
otherwise be wasted produce from production facilities, for redemption as
nutritious, dehydrated food snacks — along with an array of other
products, including pet food,
nutraceuticals and biofuel.
“There is a major problem, and we need to do everything in our power to continue
to work as hard as we can to make an impact, and make a difference,” Childs
said. “We’ve been working on a systemic, end-to-end approach that can scale
globally and can make a significant impact in a short time.”
The good news is that the food waste issue has gone mainstream, and Treasure8
is just one of many startups and nonprofits working in this area. Others focus
on a specific sector — for example, companies such as Imperfect
Produce
works solely with farmers who can’t sell ugly-looking fruits and vegetables,
while Olio has developed an app that connects scavengers
with bakeries, restaurants, grocery stores or neighbors that have unsold, soon-to-spoil
goods.
While those efforts are making real, meaningful impacts, tackling the scale of
the global food waste problem and its impact on the climate means we need
radical transformation of how the global food production and distribution system
is run. That’s where Treasure8 aims to make a difference.
“It’s not like we’re taking some leftover waste from a restaurant and making a
pie that day,” Childs said. “We’re doing something that’s gotta have buy-in from
output sources, and buy-in from the input sources that works through the
system.”
The true potential of Treasure8 lies not in the crispiness of the apple and
beet chips that its dryers produce, but its ability to scale rapidly. Its
systems are energy-efficient, compact and can be adapted for a wide variety of
supply chains. They also can produce uniform outputs, something that is critical
for really shifting the global food system, which relies on stable sources and
reliable, quality products.
Image credit: Treasure8
Treasure8 also believes it can have a positive impact for nutrition — another
global challenge. Because its technology allows for a higher percentage of
nutrients to remain within food during the drying process, it could be used to
produce healthy products. Its trial
products reflect this: Ground Rules
Chips — organic, one-ingredient fruit and vegetable (beet, apple or sweet potato) chips; and the vegan One
Smart Cookie — which includes 25 percent veggies by volume. Both, of course, are designed to use food waste as key ingredients.
Currently, Treasure8 is seeking funding to expand its model and beginning to
work with more companies to use its technology to reduce food waste; its goal is
not to grow to sell lots of products, but to co-manufacture CPG products or
ingredients, or spin them off as separate entities — also potentially licensing
or leasing the Sauna technology to other companies. Getting to the level where
the company can make a real dent in reducing food waste will be a challenge, one
that the company is ready for.
“I love this company and how it is, and the promise of what it can do continues
to unfold every day,” Childs said. Still, he sees the real test coming with how
the company scales. “Are our systems global yet? No. Until that is rolling on
every major continent, and without me having to do a lot of the lift, I’m not
going to be satisfied, frankly.”
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Media, Campaign and Research Consultant
Nithin is a freelance writer who focuses on global economic, and environmental issues with an aim at building channels of communication and collaboration around common challenges.
Published Jul 16, 2019 11am EDT / 8am PDT / 4pm BST / 5pm CEST