Category Archives: Ethical Food

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August 26, 2012

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Ethical Food, Packaging

Slowpack #terramadre

One of my “must attend” events at the 2012 Terra Madre is Slowpack – being held for the first time in October.

This tackles one of the many challenges around packaged foods – the waste involved in packaging individual items. The aim of the awards is to foster greater use of ecological and sustainable packaging options and there are 4 categories:

1) Traditional techniques and materials: This award will recognize a form of packaging that consists of materials that recover a traditional way of packaging and conservation.

2) Innovative techniques and materials: this award will recognize a form of packaging that is both eco-friendly and eco-sustainable, made with innovative, reusable, recyclable and biodegradable materials that are derived from efficient production processes from an energy point of view, with low levels of harmful emissions.

3) Communication of the product’s quality: this award will recognize a label with highly effective communication that helps that consumer understand the product’s characteristics that distinguish it from the competition by describing, for example, the traceability of its ingredients, the history of the product or its uniqueness and indicating the correct way to reuse or dispose of the packaging

4) Chain of primary, secondary and tertiary packaging: this award will recognize a label whose choice of all levels of packaging fully respects the environment.

More information here (closing date for entries 31st Aug)

/ Keith

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August 25, 2012

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Ethical Food, Startups

@BeyondMeat

What they do

Set up to develop plant based proteins and directly substitute them for meat proteins. The photo below shows their “chicken” strip in a product from Whole Foods.

Where they do it

US based (currently opening new manufacturing facility in Columbia) and currently US focused in their distribution and business development. As they are a relatively new business even that focus is limited to the West Coast with a small present on the East – see their map here.

Who are they

The business was started by Ethan Brown in 2009 (he has a background in clean energy and avoids social media as far as I can make out) and in June 2012 hit the headlines with a investment round which included Biz Stone and Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers. Biz is better known for Twitter but a has been a vegan the past 10 years.

On the Kleiner side this one is in their Greentech portfolio – I find that very interesting indeed.

The ethical bit?

Combines a move away from slaughtered protein with a very strong pro-environment message.

My thoughts

Like this one a lot. The last 10 years have seen enormous strides in vegetarian/vegan foodstuffs and this startup could accelerate the sector nicely.

Captured nicely in this quote from Biz Stone “These guys are coming at the meat analogue industry not as a novelty kind of thing or hippy dippy. They were coming at it from this big science, super practical, scalable angle. They were saying, ‘We want to get into the multi-billion-dollar meat industry with a plant-based meat,” says Stone.

This is where significant change happens – where a business can scale and create impact without sacrificing core principles. Would love to work with these guys and girls 🙂

Links to more

http://beyondmeat.com/

twitter.com/BeyondMeat

https://www.facebook.com/beyondmeat

http://www.dailyherald.com/article/20120805/entlife/708059945/

http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680007/biz-stone-explains-why-twitters-co-founders-are-betting-big-on-a-vegan-meat-startup

/ Keith

 

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August 19, 2012

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Ethical Food, Great brands and producers

Alter Eco Foods

What they do

They have created a food brand which starts from the point that food is fundamental to life – and whole, healthy, delicious food can make life better for people all over the world.

Where they do it

They started in France and in 2010 expanded into the US with a separate entity and a funding round there.

Who are they

Tristan Lecomte in France, Mathieu Senard and Edouard Rollet in the United States and Ilse Keijzer in Australia.

The ethical bit?

They work directly with the producers who grow and process their products. Fairtrade, carbon neutral and organic. Check out this product information page which gives a great view of how they communicate comprehensive information on each product.

http://www.alterecofoods.com/products/chocolate/dark-coconut-toffee

Couple of great images from their site give an overview of their ethos

My thoughts

It is so difficult to do what they have done and are doing – running a business is a compromised activity at the best of times without the apparent constraints imposed by deliberately not following the standard commercial arrangements.

Having been a consumer of organic and fairly traded products for over 25 years it is a joy to see high quality products which hold their own in terms of taste and presentation – a million miles away from the badly presented and barely edible products of years ago 🙂

I have never seen these products on my travels but will keep my eyes open for them from now on.

Links to more

http://www.alterecofoods.com

https://twitter.com/alterecosf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alter_Eco

http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/mathieu-senard-and-edouard-rollet

/ Keith

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August 18, 2012

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Ethical Food, Media Watch, Startups

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Ethical Food Businesses – some information sources I will be keeping an eye on

I already subscribe to a couple of these blogs and follow their founders on twitter and I will be adding to the list as I find more.

Worth saying here that a food startup in itself is of no interest to me personally – it must have a ethical core to it. The perpetuation of cheap food for the mainstream is irrelevant here as are reviews of normal restaurant chains and mass produced dishes. So while these sources cover a lot of great businesses not many of those will be mentioned in posts here. Just so we are clear 😉

2/9/12 – http://www.springwise.com/?s=food

31/8/12 – http://www.good.is/tag/food/

31/8/12 – http://ethicalfoods.com/

Food and Technology Connect – Danielle Gould

Forbes Food Startups

Quora Food Tech Startups

Edible Startups – Michelle Paratore

Guardian UK Organics Coverage

Meetup Food Startups Group

If you have ones to add to the above please let me know in the comments
Keith