Nicole Astra:
Welcome to Talking Plant Protein. I'm Nicole Astra with a true game changer in the hot seat today, just named to Forbes 30 under 30, co-founder and COO of Renewal Mill, please welcome Caroline Cotto to the show.

Caroline Cotto:
Thanks so much. Happy to be here, Nicole.

Nicole Astra:
So first, I want to ask you, educate me a little bit on some statistics around global food loss. Because, your name keeps coming up, Caroline, for your fundraising, for your participation in Future Food. I understand that one of your ingredients was featured in the most favorite dish presented that night. But I want to start with your approach to food. So give me your thoughts on global food loss.

Caroline Cotto:
Yeah. So food waste is a massive problem. It's estimated that about 30 to 40% of food globally goes to waste of all the food that we produce. And if we were to kind of quantify the carbon impact of that, it's equivalent to one of the largest countries in the world. So behind China and the US, food waste would be the largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. It's about 6% of greenhouse gas emissions totally. So according to Project Drawdown, which is one of the leading climate change research organizations, reducing food waste is actually the number one thing we can do to stop at two degrees of climate warming currently.

Nicole Astra:
Wow. So How does upcycling, we'll say, these byproducts affect climate change and food loss?

Caroline Cotto:
Yeah. So, we're wasting billions of pounds of byproducts or side streams that are full of nutrition that we're processing out of our food, not because they're kind of unsafe, but just because it's been easier or more convenient to just truckload it away to landfill. So what we're doing with upcycling is making sure that we keep all of that valuable nutrition in the supply chain. So at my company, Renewal Mill, we're primarily working with the byproducts of plant-based milk right now and taking those and dehydrating them and milling them in order to keep them shelf stable so that they don't go to waste. But there are people doing this in all sorts of different side streams from cacao fruit to cascara left over from coffee beans or coffee fruit, to even the water squeezed out of dehydrated fruit and vegetables that they're cap-

Nicole Astra:
And it's so fascinating and exciting because we are always talking about, well, less carbon footprint, but also of shrinking that supply chain. So it's fascinating to me. Tell me about some of your most popular products.

Caroline Cotto:
Yeah. We started with two main ingredients. Okara flour comes from the pulp leftover when you make soy milk, and an oat protein, which comes from the pulp leftover when you make oat milk. And so we sell both of those flours. But then we use them in a line of just add oil and water vegan, gluten free baking mixes. And of those, the best seller is the dark chocolate brownie mix. So yeah, we kind of focus a lot of our branded products on delicious baked goods and baking mixes that everyone can enjoy. But these ingredients are really versatile. So our oat milk flour has 31 grams of protein per serving, so it's a really great way to boost the nutrition of your favorite pancakes or banana breads or things like that.

Nicole Astra:
So where do you see Renewal Mill going next?

Caroline Cotto:
Yeah, we're hoping to be the go to upcycle ingredient supplier for the food industry. So we've recently started exploring, adding some new ingredients to our portfolio. And we're hoping to have a full offering of gluten free upcycled ingredients for folks to use as well as expanding our branded product line outside of just the baking aisle. So hopefully you'll see us in some more snacking categories and savory categories soon.

Nicole Astra:
It's exciting stuff. Thank you so much for your time on Talking Plant Protein.

Caroline Cotto:
Thanks for having me. Have a great one.