OAKLAND, CA — From plant milk to plant butter to plant-based meat, there’s very little that a nut, seed, fruit or bean can’t become these days. But it’s not those products that Claire Schlemme has her sights on — she just wants the leftovers.
Schlemme is the co-founder and CEO of Renewal Mill, a food company that fights food waste by transforming the byproducts of things like plant milk into shelf-stable flour and baking mixes. The company is one of several emerging food and beverage brands that upcycles food surplus into new and high-quality products, saving both money and the planet by fighting climate change.
The United Nations estimated that one-third of all food produced in the world ends up in landfills before it’s had a chance to land on a kitchen table; that’s a major contributor to methane emissions. Renewal takes the pulp from plant milk — and other processes like beer production — that would otherwise be wasted, and it gives it new life. A natural thermal drying process creates a versatile, shelf-stable product that can be used to bake cookies, bread chicken and more.
Long before Schelmme entered the baking ingredient realm, she was the co-founder of Boston’s first organic juice company. It was there where her eyes were opened to the excessive volume of byproducts created from the fruits and vegetables they used, and it was something she couldn’t look away from. After hearing a nearly identical sentiment from a soymilk producer, she knew she could do something to give these byproducts a new life.
“We just had an immediate bond over the pain points of byproducts,” she said. “It wasn’t necessarily a surprise to realize that there are inefficiencies in how we think about food production, but it was definitely eye-opening.”
Renewal is also killing two birds with one stone given that most of their products are considered alternative and gluten-free, a booming market in the flour world as of late. The company’s “pantry” of retail products that are sold in stores and online includes baking mixes for cookies and brownies, plain flour, and 1-to-1 gluten-free baking flour, in addition to some finished products. But the company also has wholesale Okara (the byproduct of soymilk) and oat flour, and its working on a corn flour and spent grain flour — the leftovers from the beer-brewing process — for commercial use.
“When we talk about upcycled food being sustainable, there’s something real behind it,” Schlemme said. “That’s such an important piece. Yes, you want it for your marketing story, but you also want to know that you’re truly doing something good.”
“We use a lot of flour,” Schlemme said. “A lot of the growth we have seen in that market has been driven by alternative and gluten-free flowers, and this is a great subset of that group, is an upcycled flour that meets those [dietary needs].”
Seeing new pathways to sustainable food production every day, Schlemme works to make the green choice the easy choice for food companies trying to be more conscious of their carbon footprint.
“It does take extra thought and care to choose something more sustainable, so we want to make it easy for someone to opt in,” Schlemme said. “We are also really measuring, quantifying and tracking what we are doing so that we can bring that story to folks instead of just hand-waving and saying, ‘It’s sustainable.’ We can show them the realness behind it.”
Schlemme said that was a huge driver to the formation of the Upcycled Food Association (UFA), which is the trade group dedicated to research, advocacy and empowerment for a sustainable food system. Renewal Mill is a member company, and Caroline Cotto, Renewal Mill’s other co-founder and COO, is president of the UFA board of directors, working with the association to ensure standards and promote a circular economy of food that minimizes waste.
“When we talk about upcycled food being sustainable, there’s something real behind it,” Schlemme said. “That’s such an important piece. Yes, you want it for your marketing story, but you also want to know that you’re truly doing something good.”
When it comes to Renewal’s work with other companies, there’s little the company can’t do. The group has its own R&D team to help with formulations and does direct ingredient sales on the private label and the branded sides. They’ve partnered with Pulp Pantry, Seconds Crackers and Fancy Pants Bakery, and the team also helped Tia Lupita, a grain-free tortilla company, formulate their product using Renewal’s okara flour and cactus flour (spines removed, of course).
“They were using cactus because it’s a super sustainable crop that doesn’t require a lot of water,” Schlemme said. “They brought the cactus, and we brought the upcycled.”
In the five-and-a-half years that Renewal has been in business, Schlemme has seen a huge shift in the awareness of how food waste impacts the world. The interest in sustainable options is on the rise for consumers and on the corporate side, making it an exciting time to be in the world of upcycling. For the future of sustainable foods, opportunities abound.
“You’ve got a seemingly endless supply of these byproducts that we could be utilizing, and you have a growing demand on the customer side,” she said. “It’s a really cool time for those to be coming together.”
