Paul Cuatrecasas
As the demand for ESG practices has built up over recent years, the term ‘CleanTech’ has become the buzzword for renewable,‘green technology’ energy resources such as wind and solar energy.
However, limiting ‘CleanTech’ to renewable energy sources is missing a trick as the term can now be used as a blanket term to refer to a range of innovations aimed at improving sustainability by promoting environmentally friendly practices and technologies.
Increasing concerns about climate change are leading to intense pressure on manufacturers to improving sustainability. For the food and beverage (F&B) industry, which is a major manufacturing industry, the pandemic upped the stakes. Fortunately, F&B is already one of the leading industries when it comes to sustainability. According to research by ESG consultants EcoVadis, F&B has an overall sustainability score of 48.9, coming in behind only Construction (49.4) and Finance, Legal and Consulting (51.1). F&B is the highest scoring vertical for environmental issues and has significantly improved its ethical profile.
Today’s millennials are concerned about the food and the beverages they consume and the impact on their health and on the environment. As a result of these rapidly changing consumer preferences, the F&B industry has witnessed a significant shift towards alternative protein, especially the plant-based and even cultured or lab-grown “meats.”
China, the world’s largest consumer of meat, is actively moving towards alternative protein to tackle the countrywide issues of declining natural resources, ratcheting protein demand, climate change commitments, and the evolving dietary preferences of an expanding middle-class and growing population.Lab-based and plant-based meat promise to help solve this challenge. Indeed, the plant-based meat market in China is forecasted to grow to nearly $4 billion by 2025.
According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, raising livestock for food accounts for up to 14.5 percent of global emissions. Cattle is the highest agricultural source of greenhouse gases (GHG) globally. Each year, a single cow releases about 220 pounds of methane. Lab-based and plant-based meat promise to help solve this challenge.
Moreover, it is expected that the consumption of food will increase by about 60 percent by 2050, which will require additional 593 million hectares of land (almost double the size of India). Adoption of cultured meat is going to significantly help the world move towards a sustainable future with a reduction in agricultural land use and lower GHG emissions.
Another major environmental concern we are facing is the increasing scarcity of water, which is going to become a major problem for the beverages industry.
According to the beverage industry innovator Cana, it takes nearly 600 litres of water to make 1 bottle of wineand around 200 litres of water to make 1 glass of orange juice from cultivation to consumption. An average American household uses over 3,500 beverage containers per year and less than 20 percent get recycled.
On a global scale, about 1 trillion bottles and cans are used in packaging, but only 20 percent get recycled.What is really scary is that it takes about 2 trillion litres of water and 120 million acres of land to grow and process beverage ingredients worldwide, every year!
Moreover, creating, packaging and shipping beverages like soda and juice– which are 99percent water – globally causes over 500 million tons of CO2 emissions every year. And this is when over 90 percent of households who are buying these beverages already have water in their home!
What’s fascinating is that the majority of ingredients for most beverages are the same, with the formulation tweaks giving them different taste and texture profiles.
There are innovations happening right now in the beverage industry that will allow you soon to make your favourite beverage at home not only at a fraction of the current cost, but while also eliminating the use of all that land, water and carbon emissions that are currently required for beverage consumption.
“Today’s millennials are concerned about the food and the beverages they consume and the impact on their health and on the environment.
Disruptive, start-up tech companies everywhere are making this happen. Companies such as UK’s Notpla, which is creating edible packaging for beverages using seaweed.
The potential environmental impact of using these new technologies is easy to see. Start-ups, often working in tandem with large established corporates, are on the cusp of creating an absolutely massive reduction in the amount of water and carbon emissions used in creating, packaging, and transporting beverages globally.
The world is undergoing a decisive shift towards the future of more digital, decarbonized and resource efficient industries.
Food and beverage technology is going to be a huge part of this shift. So huge that itdeserves its own place in ‘CleanTech,’ right next to renewable energy resources.
