This tea brand is fighting food waste in an ingenious way
One cup at a time
Toronto-based Pluck has become the world’s first tea brand to be certified in upcycling.
This certificate is given to brands that use ingredients that would have otherwise gone to waste and impacted the environment.
Pluck is cleverly using ingredients like grape skins, orange peel and cacao shells in their blends.
And all of this (so-called) waste is procured from other local manufacturers, which further reduces the emission. Here are some examples-
Citrus peel, saved and immediately dried for us by a local juice maker (who also happens to supply many of the restaurants we work with!)
Cacao shells, reserved and roasted for us by a local bean-to-bar chocolatier
Apple pieces, cut and dried from less-than-perfect looking locally grown apples
Grape skins, saved for us after pressing for juice by Ann, winemaker at Southbrook Vineyards in Niagara
They pack them in zero-waste glass jars and deliver them across the city using their cycles.
What a beautiful, wholesome solution💚
Moving onto this week’s content. So today, we have👇🏽
A startup that’s on a mission to build a fossil-fuel-free future
Another brand that’s turning plastic into apparel
Some good news
🤗 This startup is on a mission to build a fossil-fuel-free future
Powering everything…TV, watches, bikes, water bottles, calculators, pipes, jackets, couches, robots- all of them are made of carbon-based compounds. These compounds are the foundation of our modern world. And where do we get this carbon from? From fossil fuels in the form of petrochemicals. If fossil fuels are involved, there are emissions and greenhouse gases associated with them.
From thin air…Born out of a lab at Stanford University, Twelve is working on extracting this carbon from the air instead of fossil fuels. It’s using a revolutionary carbon transformation technology. Carbon dioxide would be sourced from factories and other sources(reducing the CO2 emission) and converted into carbon-based compounds, without the use of fossil fuels. Its process is similar to photosynthesis, where a plant uses CO2, water and sunlight to make useful carbon-based products.
Its technology is an electrochemical reactor that uses CO2, water and renewable energy as inputs.
Thousands of chemicals and fuel products are produced as output.
All this happens without any fossil fuels, emissions or trade-offs.
Carbon to products…It has internally developed CO2-derived sunglasses and has also provided material for sunglasses to the sustainable fashion brand Pangaia. It is also working with Alaska Airlines and Microsoft to manufacture and commercialize CO2-based jet fuel using its technology. It claims that this fuel offers more than an 80% cut in greenhouse-gas emissions compared with conventional fuels.
👔 This brand is turning plastic into apparel
That’s a lie…Plastic hardly gets recycled. Most of it ends up in landfills or oceans and sits there for centuries. Every piece of plastic that you would have used in your life is still lying somewhere on the planet- it might have broken down and got ingested by a marine creature. Or it could be taking up space in some landfill- but it’s not gone.
Clothes from plastic…A mission-driven sustainable apparel company, Recover prevents plastic from ending up in the environment by turning it into apparel. Based in North Carolina, US, they collect plastic and aluminum waste, sort them out, turn them into pellets, manufacture yarn and knit them into apparel.
This prevents plastic from polluting the environment.
The entire process is done within 250 miles radius of the source plastic- bringing down the transportation emission.
Customers can even send their old Recover clothes which are then upcycled into new products.
All in one place…To bring down their emissions, wastage and cost, they have built a vertically integrated factory in El Salvador, a country in Central America. Everything from spinning recycled fibres into yarn to sewing a finished garment is done in this factory.
😹 Some Good News
♵ Fintastic News: Robot shark collects 21,000 plastic bottles a day!
🐅 On the right track: Big cat family finds a new home after 15 years in a train carriage
🐘 Trunk-ated Carbon Footprint: Elephants Join the Fight Against Climate Change!
Shoutout to Aakanksha for making this punny
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Have a great weekend and see you next week😊