The future of fabric and the end of food waste
And how refibre is turning food waste into a commodity
This article was written with the help of Gabriel Bernal, Nour Kouaidia, Victoria Sulyma, and Michael Vlamis.
Carolina Burges is a farmer who works in South Dakota, every harvest season she has to throw away tons of food just because they don’t look good enough or don’t pass the state’s food quality standards. She knows that selling produce that isn’t of the best quality is almost impossible, and because of this farmers, grocers, and restaurants have to throw away millions of meals worth of food a year.
Rob Greenfield is an American activist who works to bring attention to the world’s most pressing issues. One day, he was biking and found tonnes of tomatoes thrown out on a field to rot. The tomatoes were completely edible, they just weren’t as aesthetically pleasing as the world wanted them to be.
He couldn’t believe that that’s how almost half of all foods produced in the USA are wasted.
This is the problem we aim to fix at refibre
We have created a solution in which we can make sure that food waste doesn’t end up in landfills and is instead turned into an eco-friendly product, fabric. In this article, I will be going into why this is a huge problem that we’ve chosen to solve, and how our solution works on both a technical and economic level.
Why food waste?
When food ends up in a landfill, it creates methane, a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide
Methane accounts for about twenty percent of greenhouse gas emissions, and food waste is a big contributor to that statistic. Wasted foods add even more pollution to the methane and GHG emissions produced during the production of the food.
Globally, we waste about 1.4 billion tons of food every year.
That is 1,400,000,000,000 Kg of food every. single. year.
That definitely looks like more than a few meals…
In fact, the US alone wastes 130 million meals worth of food every single year to put that into perspective.
But let’s think about it from a wider angle. It’s not only food that’s wasted, it’s everything from the water used to produce it, the energy used to transport it and conserve it, and the human resources used at all stages of production from the farm to the grocery store.
5 stages in which food can be wasted:
- Agricultural production
- Post-harvest handling and storage
- Processing
- Distribution
- Consumption
Every stage of the production of food contains certain standards that foods must meet, this causes the supply of food to be shaved off every time it goes through a new stage in production. Of course, the ratio at which it’s eliminated varies by industry. Some industries might waste more food in the processing phase while others in the consumption phase.
Impact of food waste
To put it into perspective, a study by McKinsey & Company projected that roughly 100 million acres of cropland could be saved if developed countries reduced consumer food waste just by 30 percent. It is also estimated that approximately 25 percent of America’s freshwater use goes into the production of wasted food!
North America is the biggest waster of food in the world. It tops the charts both on the consumer, production, and retailing sides of food waste. When we compare it to South and Southeast Asia’s charts, it becomes obvious that waste is not impossible to avoid, North America just hasn’t been trying because it’s hard to draw attention to a problem hidden in landfills.
North America doesn’t have the economic restraints that other continents have. So consumers are used to the highest end quality and better industry standards even when it comes to oranges and tomatoes. This is what results in so much food being wasted in the production to the retailing side of the supply chain. The statistics in the U.S are even more shocking…
Before COVID-19, it was estimated that 35 million people across America — including 10 million children — suffered from food insecurity. That number is expected to increase to as much as 50 million people in 2022 due to the employment drop and financial fallout from the pandemic.
Getting food to our tables eats up 10 percent of the total U.S energy budget, uses 50 percent of U.S. land, and swallows 80 percent of freshwater consumed in the United States. Yet, 40 percent of food in the United States today goes uneaten. That is more than 20 pounds of food per person every month. Not only does this mean that Americans are throwing out the equivalent of $165 billion each year, but also 25 percent of all freshwater and huge amounts of unnecessary chemicals, energy, and land.
Between the farm gate and retail stages, food loss can arise from problems during drying, milling, transporting, or processing that expose food to damage by insects, rodents, birds, moulds, and bacteria. At the retail level, equipment malfunction (such as faulty cold storage), over-ordering, and culling of blemished produce can result in food loss.
On farms, there is significant food waste because they often don’t even bother putting their worse on the market as they know they will never be bought because of high industry standards.
So after analyzing the problem in the supply chain, it becomes clear that the main reason for waste would be the fact that users are conditioned to only consume the highest end quality of any product, which forces companies all throughout the supply chain to comply with demand in order to survive the competition.
How is the problem being tackled today?
You could go around campaigning and begging people to buy less, eat their leftovers, and buy older produce. But how effective would that be?
There are many people out there looking into this problem, but their solutions are incremental. Like training staff to handle foods better, or to provide slightly better packaging that can make food last a few more days.
Some countries around the world are ahead of America when it comes to managing food waste. France, for example, requires restaurants to donate food that is at risk of being thrown out but is still safe to eat. Cities in Sweden use food waste to create fuel for public bus transit. In Denmark, you can use an app to find restaurants and bakeries that are about to close and purchase their remaining food at a fraction of the cost.
But if any of these solutions were effective enough to stop food waste on their own, I wouldn’t be here writing you this article and you wouldn’t be sitting there reading it. That is why we’ve decided to join the race to fight food waste.
Enter refibre
We’re using food waste produced at the production level of the supply chain to make something useful instead of having it end up in landfills, which emits GHGs and just wastes edible food.
refibre is focused on collecting food waste from produce farms and turning it into a competition-worthy textile for everyday wear.
Something useful = organic textile.
We’re here to solve a problem, but we’re also here to enable an interesting future for the world as well. Using a process called Acid Hydrolysis, and another called Viscose Rayon.
“How?” you might ask…
I know what you’re thinking, what an amazing idea and how can I get my hands on this! Well, don’t you worry. Now let’s go through a step-by-step process on how we’re making the fabric you see above!
STEP 1 (Acquiring the food waste)
The first step in making food-waste-based textile is… you guessed it! Get your hands on some good old food waste.
According to this FAO study, in the case of fruits and vegetables, losses at harvest and during sorting and grading dominate in industrialized regions, probably mostly due to discarding during grading to meet quality standards set by retailers.
Therefore we get our materials in the form of produce that didn’t meet retailer standards and was bound for the landfill from farms and other commercial businesses such as restaurants and grocers as it is the most optimal way to get rid of food waste effectively, and fast!
So now we know where we get our materials from, but what next? What kinds of food are we talking about, cellulose and mycelium-rich foods of course! This would be something we would specify to our producers to ensure we have the right waste for the job, as mentioned earlier in the article foods like apples, tomatoes, nuts, legumes, peas, roots, rice, and potatoes are all great examples of food we could use and all of these are organic food waste, which is important because we aren’t making food out of things like bread or meat.
Organic food waste also makes up around 30–40% of food waste in developed nations, so we aren’t going to need to look far for sources of waste!
STEP 2 (Extracting the compounds)
Once we have the food waste at our factories we can start the process of turning it into a fabric, we will put our food waste into our first solution, acid hydrolysis. The neat part about this is that we can put the food waste into the concentration without any prior modifications.
This is because acid hydrolysis works by having enough acidity to disintegrate the pulpy parts of the food but the stronger compounds of cellulose and mycelium are resistant to the acid. Once the process is finished all that would be left once the acid is drained is a thin layer of mush of pure cellulose and mycelium that we can then move into our second solution and prepare to be woven!
You can go extremely in-depth on the chemistry of cellulose fibres and all the chemical reactions happening here.
STEP 3 (Making the fabric)
Now let’s get into the fun part, after our pure layer of compounds has been extracted we can now go into our second process, Viscose Rayon. Which helps turn our mesh into a form of, viscose rayon, you’ll get used to it. This all starts when we first add a second ingredient to our mesh, the second ingredient must be high in cellulose and could be something like wood fibre. This helps make our product cheaper since we aren’t using pure cellulose/mycelium and makes it bind easier.
From there we would age the mesh for up to two days and then dissolve all the mesh into the purest liquid form of compounds with no extra bits of other substances from the original food waste (this doesn’t include our second ingredient which would introduce another can get so there won’t be any problems binding the compounds in later stages.)
From there we can age our mesh for another two days to once again reinforce the compounds together. Then we can finally put our mesh through rapid compression which helps bind the fibres, once that’s done with a bit of fermentation using butyric acid, bleaching, and after treatment to once again tone our leather so it’s not susceptible to wear and tear over time, we will have fabric!
After that, we can cut and dry the fabric and it will be ready to ship off to our customers
The graph below shows the entire process!
This whole process will take from 5 to 7 days and from there we can distribute it to customers! Let’s go into that into the financial side of things.
The financial side of things
Below you will find a rundown of everything financial going on behind refibre, from supply chains to the cost of the fabric itself.
Final production cost
Our customers are already leaders and are going out of their way to take a step towards positive change, so it would only be fair if we were to meet them halfway there. That is why our textiles are designed to be price-competitive. You don’t have to jump up a whole economic class to be able to afford refibre.
Costs for the machinery and transportation of good has also been taken into account, for an industrial size polyester machine that would be able to weave our fabric, the cost would be around $4500CAD, and costs for transportation would also be minimal if we assume that our operating costs would range in the area of normal garbage disposal costs at $100CAD per ton of food waste. This could vary depending on region and supplier but generally, costs remain cheap since our main material is literally compost!
A square food of refibre costs around $5 per square foot to make a profit as well as stay affordable compared to cotton. The main cost would be the actual process of extracting cellulose from the food waste which could cost $5-$8 dollars, but if we produce in mass quantities keeping the price at $5 per sqft is entirely possible.
We’re able to keep the prices reasonable because the materials we will be using are not nearly as expensive or energy-intensive as cotton or polyester or typical industry fabrics. Refibre does not irrigate crops or destroy thousands of acres of cropland by draining nutrients and making it less fertile.
Due to transportation costs of an estimated $120 per ton of food, this would lead to 1 ton of high cellulose-based food being transported to our factories. With this price, we can make it so the whole process to create the fabric costs $1.45 per pound of food will lead to a square foot of the fabric costing $5 at retail price when sold to the consumer and other companies/manufacturers while still making a profit to maintain operations.
Suppliers
To acquire food waste refibre would aim to partner with local businesses in an entire town as well as megacorporations and farms that waste tons of food monthly. A long-term partnership would ensure that we have a constant supply of waste coming in from multiple areas to be then transported to a manufacturing plant near them.
How we’re selling
We would aim to sell our product as a material to manufacturers to be used in products. This is so we can make partnerships with big brands and don’t need to worry about creating actual products. So with this, you can expect a future where Refibre Nikewear or Refibre blankets are a reality!
Our company
It’s embarrassing that almost 800 million people around the world are starving every day, while we waste 1.3 billion tonnes of food globally every year. Making change requires being a leader, from producing organic textiles to buying and using them, fighting against food waste is a responsibility that falls on all of our shoulders.
Vision
A world without food waste — refibre
The world isn’t, and shouldn’t get away with wasting so much food and passing it off as if it was normal.
Our vision is to see a world where absolutely zero food is ever wasted.
800 million people around the world will have access to reliable and affordable food.
1/7 U.S citizens won’t have to be food insecure.
40% of all edible food worldwide won’t be wasted.
Mission
Reducing food waste by creating an accessible feel-good fabric that has a positive impact on our environment — refibre
A vision without a mission is only wishful thinking. We’re here to make our vision come to life by producing quality fabric. Feel-good fabric, not only physically, but morally as well. You can be at peace knowing your lifestyle is not detrimental to our environment.
We’re here to make helping the environment an easier task. You don’t have to dedicate your life to activism or own a couple of million bucks or sacrifice the quality of your lifestyle to help the world become a better place.
Values
- Creating a safe and positive environment to share ideas and provide feedback
- Striving to create easily accessible products that make people feel good about themselves and
- Allowing for innovation to be a natural and fun part of working and creating
- Making helping the environment and buying eco-friendly products seamless and common throughout the world
We’re here to make an impact, and we’re here to stay.
What to expect from refibre
In conclusion, refibre is a company that strives for the best in the world. We aim to partner with everyday farmers and companies to turn their waste into something that will benefit the world. We also strive to make our product accessible to all and serve as an eco-friendly alternative to crops such as cotton. Refibre also aims to be a positive place that works towards innovation and sustainability.
We’ve seen what the people have said, and they agree that refibre is something that could truly change the world. Don’t believe us? See for yourself.
Both industry professionals such as Véronic and consumers like David are behind the mission refibre strives towards and as a company, we will continue to work hard to change the world for the better.
Are you ready to join us?
