The Wednesday Interview:
I talk to Tinia Pina, CEO of Re-Nuble, about how her organisation uses commercial vegetable waste to produce a nutrient feed for hydroponic farmers. They use sea-food waste from fish processors too. It makes a biodegradable substrate to support the hydroponic plants.
Climate Crisis
Discussion about the climate crisis continues both about whether there really is a climate crisis, and what we should, or could, be doing about it. I have a number of interviewees lined up to give their views.
It's vital that we remove the threat of climate crisis, that we avoid unusual and extreme weather, that we do everything we can to ensure nothing threatens global food production and that we avoid floods, droughts and storms and protect the lives of the world’s population. At the same time, if we save the world we want it to be a nice place to live. You’ll hear next Wednesday about dealing with plastic pollution.
Reduce, re-use, recycle
Today we’re considering why it's essential to reduce, reuse and recycle. And of course the full circular economy model goes very much further: to repurpose, remanufacture, repair and so on. We need to do all these things to minimise our use of virgin resources, because there’s a finite supply and growing demand as more and more citizens of the world seek a Western lifestyle. We need to avoid, as far as possible, the energy needed to manufacture new things. We need to minimise transport emissions by minimising the journeys that products and raw materials take from source to factory to consumer. We need to minimise waste, and to minimise the distance that any remaining waste has to travel for processing.
Think Carbon
Look at any product and THINK CARBON. The carbon footprint of almost any product can be reduced.
Here’s an example.
Tinia Pina - Re-Nuble
Anthony 0:00
Today I'm talking to Tinia Pina, who is CEO and founder of Re-Nuble. Yes, the clue is in the name: Re-Nuble. It's all part of the circular economy, I like to think. “Indoor growing solutions” is the tagline on the website. Tinia, welcome. Tell us a bit more about what you're offering to market.
Circularity
Tinia Pina 0:22
Thank you, Anthony. And first, we'd like to thank you for just having us be a part of your story today. What Re-Nuble focuses on is exactly what you said: the circularity of food waste. And essentially, we try to bake create a platform of sustainable technologies for indoor growers so that they can benefit from a positive climate and financial impact. The reason why we focused on food waste specific to indoor growers, and not so much the traditional field of farmers is that being able to grow organically or using more, what would be biological alternatives. So for soil, you can take chicken litter, you can take horse manure, or other traditional organic fertilisers, and use it with ease because you have the microbes and the soil is able to be a really good area or environment to serve as a soil trench. So the microbes have a great ecosystem that's diverse enough to break down the nutrients, and finally make it readily available as plant food to these plants.
Hydroponics
Whereas in a soilless or hydroponic system, it's far different, you know, farmers or growers seeking to grow using this type of method, where they're really just using nutrients and water and delivering it in more precise ways to the root. They really command and really hype around more sterile clean farming systems, whether it's in a deep water culture pond, or a hydroponic nutrient film technique system. And so what we try to do is to take food waste, and it can be very enticing food waste. So right now we work with broccoli, carrots, corn, cauliflower, it can be a mix. And that waste, we basically process it in a unique way that makes it compatible for these very soilless systems to grow having the same comparable growth and productivity as they are with conventional mineral salts.
Anthony 2:21
Okay, so we're talking here about commercial farms, aren't we,… talking about greenhouses with hydroponic systems? This is not for the everyday consumer.
Tinia Pina 2:31
Oh, good point. So we are working with some brands that have hydroponic systems or at-home, think of an aero garden system, or lettuce grow farm stand, where people like you and I want to grow hydroponically, and just in an indoor garden. We are working with a number of partners to use our nutrients in replace of the mineral salts.
Commercial Agriculture
Anthony 2:52
Right. But the main market at the moment, I think is is the commercial market. So you're providing them a growing medium for the plants to sit on and the liquids to provide the nutrients and fertiliser to the hydroponic system. Am I correct?
Tinia Pina 3:06
You're exactly correct.
Anthony 3:09
You mentioned that you're recycling waste vegetables as basically as your feedstock. I saw somewhere that you can also process waste seafood. But your ingredients surely will affect the actual nature of what you produce. I mean, somehow I imagine you have to analyse each batch and correct the the balance of nutrients. Is that right?
Baseline NPK
Tinia Pina 3:35
Yeah, it's actually very right, Anthony, because we get that question often. So for example, we're asked if your waste that you receive as a raw material, right, and that this is coming from food manufacturers and distributors. And it's that residual that can't be easily given to a composting facility, because it's maybe two hours north of the city, or there's just not local composting infrastructure. So we take that from our national food waste hauler where they already have networks and customers that they serve. And they work with us because we're able to more cheaply process it within 24 hours in a completely enclosed warehouse, that will, you know, basically turn it into the same product each time, even though we may not have, we may not be working with the exact number of carrots or broccoli. So we've had invested like seven to eight years of r&d to basically come up with a baseline NPK or nitrogen phosphorus potassium level, so that we know how much we can extract of that from the food waste and be able to modify based on the crop type needs.
Growing Medium
Anthony 4:43
Right. So you have this nutrient liquid, but you also produce growing medium. Now is that just is that just a support? Is that just inert or just somewhere for the seeds or roots to lock onto?
Tinia Pina 4:56
Exactly and that's made from the crustacean waste that you mentioned. So that crustacean waste is our base kind of core ingredient or a raw material. And it's the crustacean waste post-, you know, post-fishery operations, that residual, that often composting bound, we can take that and use that to turn into a foam. Similar to like this. And this foam is basically customised based on the form factor or the size and, and depth needed by farms to do exactly what you described, put the seed in and be able to grow the plants from
Anthony 5:37
Will that material biodegrade?
Tinia Pina 5:40
Good point. So we're still you know, wrapping up like, I would say, iteration in terms of product development. The great thing about the product is that it is able to fully biodegrade within 60 days. For us, we are trying to iterate on extending that so that fruiting crops such as tomatoes can be able to use the same media as your leafy greens, which would need a media more than 45 days typically.
Anthony 6:08
Right? What are you competing with? For that sort of product?
Rockwool
Tinia Pina 6:13
Yeah, so we're competing with rockwool. You're competing with peat, you know, the thing is with the substrate industry where there's this huge convergence of challenges happening right now. So you have countries such as the UK, Ireland and Canada, that are strictly putting mandates against production of peat, because of how much it's extracted to the environment. And if we're removing its ability to sequester carbon, then that certainly isn't a sustainable industry as many claim. So you have that and then you have just worldwide the gap or shortage of supply as it relates to cocoa coir, and peat, as I described. Most, from what our feedback has been with customers, most farms wish to divert or change from rockwool because even though some of the largest rockwool brands or suppliers do have a way to reclaim their rockwool, at the end of the day, it cannot be it cannot be fully recycled. And so when you look at from a lifecycle analysis perspective, you know, unless the rockwool can be used multiple times, without encountering the risk of introducing plant toxins or any contaminants, it's its ability to really be a sustainable case is strongly challenged.
Anthony 7:34
Right So at the end of its life, your product goes to what to composting?
Chitin
Tinia Pina 7:38
That's correct. So the chitin, which is sourced from the crustacean waste, and the base material, this product, it's serves a number of plant benefits. So chitin can basically help the plant almost like with immunity, let's say with us taking supplements, right chitin serves the same benefits of plants. So it will allow a plant to increase its stress resilience as it relates to plant disease or pests. And then it also provides more firm cellular structure such as stem and leaf development. So it's great to kind of have those properties within the product without, you know, adding additional nutrients or what the industry calls a nutrient charge. Because most farms or most commercial operators want to have the customisation of knowing that they're working with inert or benign media and they can customise it as they as their growth needs.
Anthony 8:37
Can you tell me something about Glens Falls vertical farm, which I found on your website?
Vertical Farm
Tinia Pina 8:41
Yeah, thanks for asking. You know what that is, is if there's anyone curious about vertical farming, how is it how it relates and how it can be adopted by non urban regions, so we're trying to show that Peri urban which is the case for Glens Falls, it's smaller city, about four and a half hours northeast of New York City as similar to more rural areas. How by integrating commercially available off the shelf proven technology partners such as fluence on the lighting PIP on the vertical structuring or structure a racking system. However, you can take those and turn them into modular grow boxes, so that non urban areas can have a turn key model to adopt in underutilised or vacant buildings in Glens Falls, that's the case of a third story commercial building in downtown. It's three stories. The farm which is literally a grow box within a 2000 square foot commercial space formerly occupied by like lawyers and service providers. We can be able to show within that 480 square feet operating space that it can be a profitable modular model, and I say modular because a lot of the farms that get into vertical farming specifically, are challenged on the financing because it is capital intensive. But as you grow, because especially with the desire for more local and sustainable production, the demand is there, at least we see it in New York and elsewhere. But, but the ability to expand the farm, doing it in a way that is cost effective, and won't, you know, especially as capital has become more expensive with due to inflation and number of drivers, it allows these new operators typically to do it in a way that they can expand and not have the same risk that some of these farms have been challenged with, and have become insolvent, unfortunately. So the project is to be fully transparent. It's to be open data from a perspective of where we're kind of building this as we grow, and sharing our learnings and insights with everyone so that if interested, they have something that they can kind of latch on and would want to replicate in their area.
Anthony 11:07
I'm assuming you have vertical farms within New York City itself.
Tinia Pina 11:11
Yes, that is correct. So you have Gotham Greens, which typically grows on rooftops, you do have Bowery, they're located right outside of New York City in Kearny, New York. And then AeroFarms, most notably, which is right in Newark, New Jersey. But there are there are smaller other ones such as farm Farm One, which is in Brooklyn, and a number of other smaller operators.
Anthony 11:33
So this vegetable waste is presumably coming from food processes within the city. But is it also coming from restaurants?
Tinia Pina 11:43
Good point, I'm not limited to the city. So we're headquartered in New York City. But our facilities in Rochester, New York, which is largely a suburban, more rural area, a lot of food production. So we typically work with the pre consumer, more clean ways, because we've, we've tested different post consumer waste types, at any time you have animal byproducts or dairy, the bacterial control issue becomes that much more challenging. And you need to be able to control for that, especially in a hydroponic system where these bacteria are fighting for light, they're trying to eat any type of energy and food source. And it can immediately turn into allergy issues, which is what we're trying to avoid. So pre consumer only, and not limited to urban areas, we definitely have facilities outside of New York City.
Food Miles
Anthony 12:37
But I feel the way it works will reduce food miles. And, you know, cut the carbon footprint of food production, because you're keeping things relatively close together. Is that right?
Tinia Pina 12:49
Yeah, you're exactly right. And you know, our goal has never been let's have Re-Nuble as a centralised facility in New York, service, all of the US and certainly not be exporting elsewhere around the world. Our goal is to take our process and replicate it so that other economies and economies can do the same thing that we're doing here. And if you look at other larger markets in India, and the UK and Ireland as well and elsewhere, you know, there's certainly the same concentration, if not similar of food waste, right? So there's a there's a market from a raw material perspective, and then the need to have more resilience as it relates to inputs. And if we can help these countries in these other areas outside the US increase their ability to make inputs from their own waste stream, that's ultimately our mission.
Anthony 13:43
So is this a plan for the future? Or is this sort of consultancy something that you're offering already?
Tinia Pina 13:48
Good point. So we've been we've been talking to a number of partners on the consultancy side, to be very honest, you know, it's most likely going to scale or be offered in a way where we find strategic partners in those markets. And they're local, they know their farmers well, they know distribution well, and we’re working with those partners to take our process and replicate it.
Anthony 14:12
Well, that's very interesting. And it's very encouraging. And as we said to start with, it's the circular economy in action. Tinia thank you very much for sharing your thoughts and ideas with the Sustainable Futures Report.
Tinia Pina 14:24
Anytime, Anthony, thank you so much for having me.
Tinia Pina of Re-Nuble. You’ll find more at re-nuble.com, and before you go looking, you should know how that’s spelt: RE-NUBLE.COM
Jubilation
If you're in the UK, or one of the far-flung members of the Commonwealth, I do hope that you've had an enjoyable Jubilee weekend. I can't say that I took a great deal of notice of it, although Friday was a lovely day for a street party. I'll comment more in next Friday's episode of the Sustainable Futures Report. And if your reaction to that is, “Hang on, this sounds like politics”, Well I make no apology. Politics is about the preservation of the security and prosperity of the people, isn't it? Without politics and governments on side we’re not going to solve the climate crisis. Anyway, let’s leave that until Friday.
For the moment, that was the Wednesday interview from the Sustainable Futures Report.
I'm Anthony Day.
Until Friday.
