In a landmark ruling, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled in favour of a group of Swiss women, who said their government violated human rights by taking inadequate action on climate change. However, the court also threw out two other similar cases.

On what was a milestone day for global climate lawsuits in Strasbourg, France, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled that the Swiss government’s inaction on climate change violates human rights, while rejecting similar claims made by French and Portuguese citizens in separate cases.

This was the first such ruling by an international court, with the ECHR acknowledging that weak climate policies can be in breach of the human rights set out in the European Convention. Despite the defeat of the other two cases, the verdict sets a legal precedent for future litigation on how the climate crisis affects people’s right to a safe planet, and amps up pressure on governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“It is clear that future generations are likely to bear an increasingly severe burden of the consequences of present failures and omissions to combat climate change,” said ECHR president Síofra O’Leary.

Why the ECHR ruled in favour of Swiss climate activists

The French suit was brought by MEP Damien Carême, who argued that France’s inadequate efforts to mitigate climate change violated his rights to life and privacy and family life. The case was filed when he was the mayor of Grand-Synthe, a coastal French town vulnerable to flooding. But the court rejected the case because he no longer lives there.

The Portuguese case, meanwhile, was filed by six youngsters who sued 32 European countries for failing to avert the climate crisis and its effects, which they said threatened their right to life and discriminated against them based on their age. The ECHR refused to admit it on the grounds that applicants can’t bring cases against countries other than Portugal, and added that they hadn’t pursued legal options within Portugal.

As for the Swiss suit, it was filed by the KlimaSeniorinnen, a group of 2,400 elderly women whose average age is 74. The eight-year legal battle saw the organisation accuse the Swiss government of not doing enough to combat climate change. They argued that their rights are especially infringed on as they’re most affected by increasingly frequent extreme heat events, citing a UN IPCC report revealing that women and older adults are among the demographics facing the highest risks of temperature-related deaths during heatwaves.

Unlike the other two cases, the ECHR agreed with the KlimaSeniorinnen, who said Switzerland violated their right to life by failing to cut emissions that can limit global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures. The court ruled that the Swiss government had failed to comply with its duties under the European Convention concerning climate change.

O’Leary noted that there were critical gaps in the process of putting in place the relevant domestic regulatory framework. “This included a failure to quantify, through a carbon budget or otherwise, national greenhouse gas emissions limitations,” she said. “The respondent state had previously failed to meet its past greenhouse gas emission reduction targets by failing to act in good time and in an appropriate and consistent manner.”

The ECHR further noted that Swiss courts hadn’t provided convincing reasons as to why they considered it unnecessary to examine the KilmaSeniorinnen’s complaints, adding that they had failed to take into consideration the compelling scientific evidence concerning climate change and hadn’t taken the complaints seriously.

Swiss president Viola Amherd wasn’t impressed with the verdict, saying: “I would like to know what the grounds for it are. Sustainability is very important to Switzerland, biodiversity is very important to Switzerland, the net-zero target is very important to Switzerland. We are working on those and will continue to work on them with all our strength. This ruling does nothing to change that.”

But the country now has a legal duty to take greater action against climate change – its current commitments outline a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030, from a 1990 baseline. And if it doesn’t update its climate policies, further litigation and financial penalties could follow.

ECHR ruling sets legal precedent for climate change lawsuits

The ECHR rejects about 90% of all applications it receives, but fast-tracked the three climate cases due to their urgent nature. In fact, it delayed hearings on six other climate cases pending the three rulings on Tuesday. These include a lawsuit in Norway that accuses the government of violating human rights by issuing new oil and gas exploration licenses beyond 2035.

The ECHR’s unprecedented decision will have a ripple effect on future climate cases, establishing a binding legal precedent for all 46 member states of the Council of Europe, which could face similar lawsuits that they’re likely to lose.

“We expect this ruling to influence climate action and climate litigation across Europe and far beyond. The ruling reinforces the vital role of courts – both international and domestic – in holding governments to their legal obligations to protect human rights from environmental harm,” said Joie Chowdhury, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law. “While today we did not see ideal outcomes in all the three cases, overall today is a watershed legal moment for climate justice and human rights.”

“I really hoped that we would win against all the countries so obviously I’m disappointed that this didn’t happen,” said Sofia Oliveira, a 19-year-old applicant in the Portugal case. “But the most important thing is that the Court has said in the Swiss women’s case that governments must cut their emissions more to protect human rights. So, their win is a win for us too and a win for everyone.”

Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the EU Commission (which Switzerland is not a part of), said: “The Commission takes note of these rulings and will of course be studying them very carefully. But regardless of the legal arguments, what these cases do is they remind us of the high importance and urgency which our citizens attach to climate action.”

Climate change litigation has been on the up for a few years now, spanning countries like the Netherlands, Pakistan, the UK, Italy, Turkey, Australia, Brazil, Peru, South Korea and New Zealand. Last month, an Indian court ruled that citizens have the right to be free from the adverse impact of climate change, while in August, youth climate activists in Montana, US registered a legal victory after a judge ruled that the state’s fossil fuel policy was violating their right to a clean and healthful environment.

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who was part of a gathering outside the court called the Swiss government’s inaction “a betrayal beyond words”. “This is only the beginning of climate litigation,” she said. “The results of this can mean in no way that we lean back. This means that we have to fight even more, since this is only the beginning. Because in a climate emergency, everything is at stake.”

The post Swiss Government’s Climate Inaction Violates Human Rights, Rules Top European Court appeared first on Green Queen.

Ugandan women-led company Fiber Foods is using a food that often goes to waste, and turning it into an ingredient that can solve plant-based and blended meat’s texture problems, servicing consumers’ increased fibre needs, and supporting local farmers via value chains.

An ingredient that can produce better meat analogues, help reduce meat consumption via more appetising blended meat products, provide a whole-food, fibre-packed option to increasingly health-conscious consumers, and boost the side income of local farmers through agricultural value chains. Sound intriguing?

That’s exactly what Fiber Foods is doing. A female-led business based in Uganda, the company is championing jackfruit as an ingredient that can address multiple pain points in the food system: whether that’s our overconsumption of meat, concerns surrounding meat alternatives, or food insecurity.

Jackfruit has already been adopted as an alternative protein solution by many producers, including Jack & Annie’s, Upton’s Naturals, Karana, Jack & Bry, and The Jackfruit Company. But Fiber Foods is approaching the fruit in a novel approach, opting to dehydrate it and offering it as an ingredient called PrimeJack, which comes in multiple shapes and sizes for manufacturers to use jackfruit as an ingredient in plant-based or blended meat applications.

“We started the company to create opportunities for women and girls in agro-processing,” says co-founder Ineke Aquarius. “[We do this] by selecting a crop that was already growing in the traditional agroforests of smallholder farmers and was not yet commercialised, which means it is the domain of women.”

She notes that while living in Uganda, she and her co-founder Inez van Oord “saw a lot of Jackfruit going to waste”, just as it appeared in more and more vegan applications in Europe. While jackfruit trees are “true climate champions” in smallholder agroforests, the lack of a market meant these were being cut down. “The fact that the trees were already there, but without commercial value, made it a ‘female crop’, which gave us the opportunity to work with women,” she says.

A fibre-packed product for meat analogues

The company developed its patent-pending tech for PrimeJack over three years, turning young fruit into an ingredient that can be produced on a large scale. It has established a production line, lab and research time in East Africa, to boost growing, harvesting and processing efficiencies for jackfruit. Meanwhile, it has a lab in the Netherlands, which is responsible for designing new applications and ingredients using PrimeJack.

Aquarius explains that the company decided to dehydrate jackfruit for sustainability reasons, reducing the volume of the product by 90%, which drastically cuts transportation emissions. “We found various other advantages,” she adds. “PrimeJack absorbs flavours in the rehydration process up to the core of the fibre, has a long shelf life and can be shipped in normal sea containers, and is not kept in brine like the pasteurised jackfruit and has therefore no sour off taste and is easier to apply in an industrial setting.”

The product will also appeal to food producers looking to improve their Nutri-Score. While jackfruit itself is low on protein (the rehydrated formulation has 1.7g per 100g), the real benefit is the fibre content, which is 8.1g per 100g once rehydrated. Fibre is an increasingly important nutrient for people, with fibre-rich diets linked with a lower risk of obesity, type 2 diabetes, strokes, high cholesterol and heart disease. Plus, it regulates incretin, a hormone described as our body’s “natural Ozempic”, given it boosts GLP-1 to control appetite and metabolism – this makes fibre-packed foods a priority in the booming gut health era.

Animal products like meat, meanwhile, don’t contain any fibre, contributing to the lack of fibre in our diets. To tackle that problem, Fiber Foods is targeting the alternative protein space, offering PrimeJack for both vegan and blended meat (which combine conventional meat with plant-based ingredients) products.

“In plant-based meat formulations, we have developed products that consist of up to 70% rehydrated PrimeJack,” says Aquarius. “However, the market for such products is smaller,” she adds. “In blended meat, up to 30% of the meat can be replaced by 4% PrimeJack, and the rest is water.”

Jackfruit makes for better blended and plant-based meat

Blended applications enable a product that is “lower cost with better nutrition and footprint”, according to the company. To illustrate this, Fiber Foods explains how a 100% beef burger has more fat (including saturated fat) and sodium than a 70% blended burger, which has 1.7g of fibre versus none for the former. In terms of protein, the conventional burger has 25g per serving, while one blended with PrimeJack contains 19g.

The ingredient has a natural flavour too, meaning it wouldn’t take away from the taste aspect of meat, which is the most important consumption driver for consumers. “The advantage of having no flavour or taste, but a high absorption potential, is that the food developer can add any flavour they desire,” says Aquarius. She reveals this could also work with cultivated meat in hybrid applications. “But the quickest win is to replace 20-30% meat for PrimeJack and reduce price, footprint and improve Nutri-Score without changing the recipe.”

All this is why Fiber Foods secured financing from agrifood tech investment fund FoodSparks, which was launched by PeakBridge and EIT Food, in January. “Fiber Foods has a strong value proposition to improve the healthiness, Nutri-Score and sustainability of existing meat alternatives and hybrid meats,” says Thomas van den Boezem, principal at PeakBridge. “Their unique product and process also make a strong business case, backed by an experienced and inspiring founding team, with a high understanding of customer needs.”

He adds that as an ingredient, jackfruit ticks all the boxes: no bad taste, low price, fictional, and sustainable. “With Fiber Foods’ unique process, jackfruit addresses a number of key problems in existing meat alternatives and hybrid meats. Jackfruit fibres provide structural benefits to the end product, with zero negative taste impact,” he explains. “The health benefits are substantial, since it’s fibre-rich, and allergen and cholesterol-free. Plus, jackfruit trees are abundant and can be accessed with existing infrastructure, making the ingredient a highly affordable option for plant-based meat alternatives.” 

Fiber Foods has just completed a life-cycle assessment, which revealed that its current production line emits 0.34kg of carbon per kg of rehydrated PrimeJack – compared to 15-30kg and 5-12kg for the same amount of beef or pork, respectively, as well as 0.7kg for Quorn’s mycoprotein. “Based on our LCA results, we are developing a plan to further lower our footprint to move to net zero in the new factory that we are establishing,” says Aquarius.

To make PrimeJack, the company peels its jackfruit first – research has shown that about 70-80% of a jackfruit consists of waste and byproducts. The peel also makes up 30% of the Fiber Foods’ jackfruit waste, one of its biggest sources of emissions. But it leaves no traces of the product in its processing hubs, having partnered with Ugandan insect protein producer Proteen.

Fiber Foods’ mission as a social enterprise

Beyond the nutrition and climate aspects, the social element of Fiber Foods is what really stands out. As a women-led company, its focus has always been to champion women’s rights and provide them with economic opportunities. The company has been building agricultural value chains to help smallholder farmers in Uganda and Kenya with an additional source of income.

These value chains allow farmers to earn a side income from crops that still need to be commercialised, but maintain the regenerative balance in their farms, alongside cash crops like coffee, cacao and vanilla. The company is now developing a second value chain through oysternuts, and says it’s contributing to UN Sustainable Development Goals 1, 5, 8 and 12 through fair prices for farmers, gender-sensitive value chains, economic growth for the agriculture sector, and promoting sustainable food systems.

Fiber Foods currently has 3,000 farmers in its value chain, with 30% of them women. By next year, it hopes to double the number of smallholders in its system to 6,000, with at least half of them being women. The startup has further created an ESG tool to trace its ingredient from farm to fork. “We have developed a traceability tool that works in the context of our farmers, in a multi-cropping food system both off- and online. The farmer data is connected to another tool, ISO2HANDLE, to link the jackfruit all the way to the consumer,” notes Aquarius.

“The traceability aspect is extremely important: applying regenerative agriculture principles and high ethical sourcing standards to produce their dehydrated jackfruit in Uganda,” says van den Boezem.

Aquarius says over 10 products containing PrimeJack made by its B2B partners have already been approved (or are in the process) to appear in big retailers this year. It is now preparing a large-scale production of blended meat products for retail and – as she ascribed to above – building a new dedicated jackfruit facility in a joint venture with its current production partner.

Despite all that, the social mission still remains high on its priority list. “Jackfruit grows year-round and provides farming families with a reliable side income, besides their seasonal cash crops like coffee or vanilla that are volatile and affected by climate change,” Aquarius says. “By processing the jackfruit in Uganda and Kenya, close to the source, job opportunities are created for mostly young women.”

The post PrimeJack: Why Fiber Foods is Championing Dehydrated Jackfruit as A Solution for Plant-Based & Blended Meat appeared first on Green Queen.

In her OpEd for International Women’s Day, Green Queen’s founding editor Sonalie Figueiras has an ask: If we’re going to disrupt food systems, let’s make sure women are in charge.

Women control most household food purchasing decisions but almost none of the industry’s production decisions. Meanwhile, men have had a (very!) long run and made a mess of things. If we’re going to disrupt the food system, we need to put women in charge.

The world we live in is built by men, for men. And that includes the food we eat. Ironically, women across the world manage the vast majority of household grocery spending and are responsible for meal planning and meeting the nutrition needs of children and their families. Yet we control almost none of the policy and production decisions around food.

This International Women’s Day (IWD), I’m asking: why aren’t more women in charge of how food is grown and sold?

Every IWD, we’re supposed to celebrate women. This is a tall order because, despite some advances over the past few decades, it’s very much still a man’s world out there.

It’s 2024 and women still make less money than men in pretty much every job and almost every country. Our bodies are policed. We’re at risk of sexual violence on a daily basis (the WHO describes this as devastatingly pervasive). There are entire hate groups dedicated to taking away our freedoms. In the few countries where we control our reproductive rights, they are getting taken away. 

Soon, things may take a turn for the worse as we enter what I like to call the ‘Age of Artificiality’, an age where artificial intelligence will make decisions on our behalf that will govern our lives. 

Silicon Valley titans (most of whom are white and male) are currently hosting press conferences, appearing on panels, and getting interviewed all over the interwebs about how terribly exciting it all is. I’m less enthused. 

A world where we leverage AI to tell us what to eat, what to manufacture, how to work, and how to think is a world where women will continue to suffer. How do I know that? Because most AI-trained robots out there are already biased against women. AI algorithms are objectifying women’s bodies, refusing to hire women, and generally putting our lives at risk. 

It’s hard for women to change any of this because women are woefully underrepresented at all levels of political decision-making worldwide and women make up less than 30% of parliament in the majority of the world. This also helps explain why universal daycare, free education, and guaranteed maternity leave are still not mainstream across the planet. Even the world’s richest country does not offer these basic rights to its female population. 

In addition, wealthy countries are grappling with population decline. Across Europe, North America, China, Australia, the UK, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand, women are choosing to have fewer or no kids. This trend is playing out all over the planet. Hundreds of millions of women in Asia, Africa, and Latin America will attain middle-class lifestyles as these regions become more financially prosperous, and they will have fewer children. 

Why? Because as women get more educated and get their own income, they are increasingly deciding not to take the (pretty shitty!) motherhood deal that society is offering (no time for self-care, the dreaded second shift, lower earnings aka the motherhood penalty, limited career advancement, higher rates of divorce (note: this is not necessarily a bad thing, but I’d argue this is not exactly every young woman’s dream), a dearth of affordable, safe childcare). Once they have freedom of movement and control over their reproductive rights, women don’t want to be beholden to domesticity. Neither do men. That’s why women do more grocery shopping and food preparation than men in the US and all over the world. In fact, 80% of US women say they are the primary grocery shopper, and 71% say they shop and prepare meals.

Here’s more data that makes clear why public investment in human health and nutrition is so low. Women tend to be in charge of family and child nutrition– responsible for food choices, menu planning, and meal preparation. Men are not dealing with the reality of these topics on a daily basis and therefore don’t prioritize it at a policy level. 

And yet, most of the food products we eat and the decisions made about our food and agricultural systems are controlled by men. 

According to a 2021 study, more than two-thirds of food systems leaders (execs at CPG/Big Food companies like Coca-Cola and Danone) are men; further, women in food jobs get paid up to 30% less than their male counterparts. This is despite the fact that women control over $31.8 trillion in worldwide spending, making up 85% of all consumer spending in the US alone.

And may I just say, men have done a pretty crappy job on the whole of keeping people healthy and ensuring our food systems are as safe, nutritious, and sustainable as they can be.

Rich countries are in the midst of a major public health crisis particularly when it comes to what researchers call lifestyle-related diseases. We are facing soaring rates of obesity (36% of the population in the US, 17-20% in Europe, 8% in Asia), heart disease (the leading cause of death globally), and diabetes (now affecting 422 million people worldwide). 

It doesn’t help that thanks to a major medical research gap that excludes women from clinical trials all too often, we are subject to drug and nutrition protocols designed for male bodies.  

And then there’s the pesky climate problem. Amidst a worsening climate crisis with extreme weather events that are causing havoc with our global food supply chains, farmers everywhere (another male-dominated industry) are grappling with more frequent heat waves, drought, loss of arable land, deforestation-linked and loss of biodiversity-related complications and water scarcity. We’re overly dependent on methane-emitting and carbon-heavy foods like beef and dairy products, which are pushing our food systems to the brink and making us sick. 

The food tech industry is working to find solutions to all these issues as we at Green Queen report every day. But who’s in charge of the change? 

NOT ENOUGH WOMEN, that’s who!

This has to change.

The post The Power Plate: Why Women Should Lead Food Industry Disruption – My Ask for IWD 2024 appeared first on Green Queen.

Today is International Women’s Day, a day all about raising visibility and awareness of women’s rights, and celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. Even though the climate crisis seems too tall a mountain to climb sometimes, so many women are using their voices and pushing for change through food, the most powerful tool of action. Today, we celebrate these women, and what their plant-based companies are doing to change the world.

Hannah Carter and Polly Trollope founded OGGS, a UK-based vegan egg and baked goods company, in 2019 – since then, it has saved the equivalent of five million chicken eggs.

Kimberlie Le is the co-founder of Prime Roots, a mycelium meat company that makes deli meats, charcuterie and bacon from koji, and was named one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for social impact in 2021.

Aleah Rae Montague is the co-founder of Meat the Mushroom, which makes Shroomacon, a clean-label vegan bacon from king oyster mushrooms, and shot to fame on Shark Tank earlier this year.

Another Shark Tank company that’s making vegan bacon is Umaro Foods, whose co-founders Beth Zotter and Amanda Stiles are using seaweed to make plant-based proteins.

The plant-based sector is booming in India. On the meat analogue side, Bollywood actress Genelia Deshmukh co-founded Imagine Meats; Roma Roy Choudhury founded Evolved Foods; Pranjuli Garg co-founded ProMeat, Akanksha Ghai co-founded BVeg Foods, and Nikki Arora Singh founded Blue Tribe Foods. And in the alt-dairy realm, there’s Sweta Khandelwal, who co-founded Better Bet; Aarohi Surya, founder of Dancing Cow; and Anushi Patel, founder of Soft Spot Cheese.

Based in Indonesia, Helga Angelina Tjahjadi is the co-founder of the country’s first plant-based meat company, Green Rebel Foods, and vegan restaurant chain Burgreens.

Vinita Choolani is founder of Singapore’s Float Foods, the maker of Asia’s first plant-based whole egg, OnlyEg. It recently secured a food safety certification for its Halal-certified facility to offer its tech to other manufacturers looking to ditch eggs.

Astrid Prajogo is the founder and CEO of China’s HaoFood, which makes meat alternatives using peanut protein. Its latest innovation is vegan xiaolongbaos (soup dumplings), with peanut meat replacing the traditional minced pork filling.

Philippine Soulères Albrand and Sheryline Thavisouk are the co-founders of Le Papondu, a French startup whose vegan eggs come in shells.

Liron Nimrodi is the co-founder and CEO of Zero Egg, an Israel-based plant-based egg company that is available in multiple countries now, including the US.

Deniz Ficicioglu is the co-founder of Berlin-based BettaF!sh, which makes vegan tuna using European seaweed.

Tanja Bogumil is the co-founder of fellow German startup Perfeggt, which is making pea-protein-based liquid vegan eggs that you can use in scrambles, carbonara, and pancakes.

Oyebola Adeyanju is the co-founder of Nigeria’s first plant-based food tech company, Veggie Victory, a Black-owned business rooted in its gender-balanced and social fairness values.

Christie Lagally founded Rebellyous Foods in 2017, and has shaped the company into a leader in the vegan chicken sector.

Courtney Boyd Myers is the co-founder of Akua, a New York-based startup that makes seaweed burgers from sustainable ocean-farmed kelp and has previously been named one of Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas for Food.

Hailey Swartz is co-founder of Actual Veggies, a fellow New York company that makes chef-crafted, whole-food plant-based burgers, made from sustainably sourced crops from regional farmers.

Canadian scientist Sujala Balaji is the founder of Rainfed Foods, a food tech company making plant-based milks from millets.

Monica Talbert is the co-founder of The Plant Based Seafood Co, an all-female, family-owned brand making fish- and crustacean-free crab cakes, scallops and shrimps.

Kerry Song is the founder of US plant-based meat brand Abbot’s Butcher, whose product range includes ground beef, chopped chicken, chorizo, and a burger.

Michelle Lee is co-founder at Lypid, a vegan fat company whose first innovation, PhytoFat, was used in a vegan pork belly, and is now part of plant-based meatballs suitable for multiple cuisines.

Hema Reddy is the founder of US company Crafty Counter, which makes WunderEgg, a range of plant-based boiled and deviled eggs, and egg patties.

And Marissa Cuevas Flores and Fanny Villiers are co-founders of MicroTERRA, a Mexican startup leveraging the power of duckweed to make plant-based proteins and ingredients, with its latest innovation aimed at sugar reduction.

This is by no means an exhaustive list – just a snapshot of all the female-founded companies doing incredible work for their communities, human health, and the climate crisis. Here’s to all the women in the world. More power to you and everything you do. Happy International Women’s Day!

The post IWD 2024: Women-Led Plant-Based Companies Shaping the Future of Food appeared first on Green Queen.

Vyld, the female-founded Berlin startup making sustainable period products from algae, has secured a seven-figure sum in seed funding that includes a financing instrument they created themselves.

Three years after launch, Vyld has raised funding worth seven figures using a novel financing model, helping its mission to disrupt the feminine care industry. The company will use the investment to launch Kelpon, the world’s first tampon made from seaweed, and accelerate the development of its period diaper.

The investment is a combination of German government and EU funds, and angel and VC capital, leveraging a self-developed sustainable financing instrument, the Future Profit Partnership Agreement (FPPA). Created by co-founder Ines Schiller, the model blends the advantages of equity and debt capital, and aligns with Vyld’s vision of steward ownership and self-sustenance.

The startup will use the funds to launch to market what it claims is the world’s first tampon made from seaweed, while continuing to develop its incontinence pads. It’s part of a long-term vision of creating an Algaeverse of healthy, sustainable and circular products tapping seaweed’s potential to develop a regenerative economy and promote ocean conservation, which helps Vyld contribute to 12 of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Built on a unique regenerative financing model

Crafted by Schiller, a former film producer, Vyld’s mezzanine financial instrument ensures the company remains independent, allowing profits to be reinvested, used to cover capital costs, or funnelled into philanthropic purposes – all the while enabling an appropriate return for investors. Instead of having an exit-based model like traditional VC startups, Vyld focuses on longer-term sustainability.

Steward ownership has two core principles. The first is self-governance, which means the voting rights of the company always remain with active employees, rather than external investors. The second is a profit-for-purpose approach, which means its profits can’t be privatised. So instead of being redistributed to shareholders, they’re reinvested in the company’s mission. It means that Vyld as a business owns itself.

Under the FPPA, the startup offers profit shares instead of a conventional equity round. Once the returns are achieved, the agreement ends. This means new investments can be secured outside of the typical equity round cycle, giving the company financial independence. This model appeals to investors who are interested in regenerative financing and are critics of maximalist financial principles.

“Tackling questions of ownership, power and financing is crucial to me as an entrepreneur. Business models create realities and extractive models do not only threaten the environment and health, but also reproduce exploitative standards and anti-democratic tendencies,” explained Schiller. “We want to counter this with a model that promotes creation instead of consumption, quality instead of quantity and triple top line instead of hypergrowth.”

Kai Viehof, one of Vyld’s investors, added: “Vyld shows that neither shareholder-value-driven venture capital nor unbridled growth is needed to successfully implement sustainable ideas that really make a difference for our planet and our society. However, change can only become possible on a broad scale if investors also rethink and provide the necessary capital fairly and with reasonable return expectations.”

As part of the company’s knowledge-sharing commitment, it is making this financial model available as an open-source case study to encourage other businesses to adopt a similar regenerative approach.

Vyld will release seaweed tampons this year, with diapers in development

Vyld was founded by Schiller and Melanie Schichan in 2021, with the long-term target of creating an entire ecosystem of non-food seaweed products under the Algaeverse, which entails both B2B and B2C offerings. The aim is to transform a menstrual health sector that produces high amounts of waste.

The startup claims that 90% of all period products employed are single-use, and plastic makes up a big chunk of their composition. Plastic comprises 90% of the content in disposable period pads, which is the equivalent of four plastic bags. It means these are not biodegradable and can take up to 600 years to decompose.

The seaweed Vyld uses in its menstrual products, though, biodegrades on land and in water, requires no fertilisers to grow, and doesn’t need to be bleached (unlike conventional tampons). Plus, it sequesters huge amounts of carbon and nitrogen while growing, offers anti-inflammatory benefits during use, and can also be applied across a range of materials, from tampon cores to external packaging.

The startup’s initial products are the Kelpon (a tampon) and Dyper (a diaper). The former was part of a successful trial with over 100 consumers late last year and is now being prepared for market launch. The latter is in pilot phase, part of a Windelwald (‘diaper forest’) project in partnership with German sanitary solutions company Goldeimer.

An algae-based compostable diaper without plastic or superabsorbent polymers, the Dyper is being trialled in 50 households both for everyday use and its potential as a humus fertiliser. The used diapers are composted under controlled conditions, and the fertilisers help plant a forest – hence the name ‘diaper forest’.

It’s an exercise in regeneration, marrying the ethos of the financial model with its product offering. It puts Vyld in pole position to disrupt a $30B market with sustainability and ethics at the heart of things.

The post Kelpon: German Female Founding Duo Raises 7-Figure Seed for World’s First Seaweed Tampon with Self-Created Financial Instrument appeared first on Green Queen.

Feeding your child should not be a barrier to success, argues our special columnist Australian entrepreneur Glen Hare, and that means companies need explicit, comprehensive breastfeeding policies for working mothers.

In a major and unexpected turn of events, I’ve been thinking about breastfeeding – a lot. Naturally, a gay man, with no children, is not generally expected to be across the intricacies of breastfeeding and its interplay within the workplace. But, what about a gay man, with no children, who is the founder and managing director of a company with a fifty percent female workforce? Should he be expected to think about breastfeeding? Absolutely.

It may be surprising, jarring even, for some to hear a male business leader discuss breastfeeding so openly. What I find even more surprising, though, is the fact that it’s taken so long. Fifty-three percent of my team at Fox & Hare Financial Advice are women (none of whom are living under a gender pay gap) and fifty percent of them are mothers. But, until recently, zero percent were protected by a strong, fair breastfeeding policy. These numbers are not anomalies. Fifty percent of Hong Kong’s total labour force is female – the second highest in the Asia Pacific, only topped by Macao and just ahead of New Zealand. 

Let’s be clear, breastfeeding is a natural and essential practice that provides numerous benefits for mothers and babies. These include, but are not limited to, the reduced risk of certain diseases, better cognitive development, and a reduction in the mother’s risk of some cancers. However, the professional burden of breastfeeding, that is the negative implications for long-term earning and career prospects often falls solely on women. This is an unfair burden that, as a business leader reliant on a team of talented, reliable, and extraordinary mothers, is my responsibility to alleviate. 

Without a supportive work environment and the proper protections in place, extended maternity leave or frequent breaks to accommodate breastfeeding can result in a whole range of negative outcomes for mothers. Women may face challenges in maintaining continuity and progression within their careers, especially if they work in competitive fields or industries where rapid changes and advancements occur. These interruptions can impact salary growth, skill development, and opportunities for promotion. Not ideal in a world that upholds a persistent and alarming gender pay gap. 

Some employers may view breastfeeding as a sign of reduced commitment to work, assuming that mothers who breastfeed will be less available or less dedicated to their job responsibilities. This perception can result in biased treatment, limited career advancement opportunities, or even the denial of certain professional opportunities for breastfeeding women. As a result, mothers may feel pressured to conceal their breastfeeding or may feel compelled to choose between breastfeeding and participating in professional settings. All of this can have far-reaching implications for an earning capacity, long-term career prospects and perhaps less importantly, depending on who you ask, the health of your organisation as a whole. 

The scariest part about it all? The fact these negative effects are not inherent to breastfeeding itself but stem from a lack of supportive policies and business leaders’ tolerance for archaic, yet pervasive societal attitudes towards breastfeeding in the workplace. At Fox & Hare, we’ve chosen to tackle these challenges head-on. By implementing a comprehensive breastfeeding policy, and fostering a culture that values gender equity and work-life balance, we intend to build a workplace where starting a family and maintaining a career are not competing priorities. 

The policy itself is far-reaching, yet surprisingly manageable. We provide suitable and reasonable facilities for team members who choose to express or breastfeed their child; lactation breaks during work hours; access to flexible work options and actively work to ensure the wider team is aware of our breastfeeding policies/facilities. As an already flexible workplace, the measures outlined in the policy offer little in the way of distraction or inconvenience for the wider team. For a new family, however, they can be revolutionary. The challenge of adjusting to their new lives just got a little easier, and we are incredibly proud to offer that opportunity. 

Of course, for some in the business community, the ‘human angle’ is never enough to justify the cost of programs centered on equity and/or inclusion. For them I offer this, women now make up a majority of university enrolments and graduations across the developed world. It is inevitable that, at some point in the near future, the most skilled applicant for a role in your organization will be a woman. As is the case with every ‘must have’ hire, other companies will be competing for their attention, time and expertise. Which employer do you think they will choose? 

As a founder and business leader, it is my responsibility to remove every possible barrier to my team’s success. Becoming a mother should not be a barrier to success. Feeding your child should not be a barrier to success and, as an extension, having a male leader who doesn’t think about breastfeeding should not be a barrier to success either. And so, I am very happy to report that the Fox & Hare breastfeeding policy brings us one step closer to a world where mothers are not penalised for caring for their children. 

The post OpEd: Company Breastfeeding Policies Help Build A Better, More Equitable World appeared first on Green Queen.

Great food speaks for itself, and it tastes even better when it’s supporting Black women’s businesses.

Each entrepreneur featured here was founded on a desire to bring healthy, nourishing food to every community and was born out of a personal vegan journey.

The following five women have put more than just plant-based ingredients into their food, it’s about changing the food system, and bringing more Black women business owners to the forefront of our changing food system.

1. Pinky Cole – Slutty Vegan

Something of a celebrity in the vegan fast-food world, Pinky Cole is the founder of Slutty Vegan. What started as a kitchen enterprise became a busy food truck and in 2018, Slutty Vegan landed on the Atlanta restaurant scene. From social media burger seller to restauranteur, Cole has never lost sight of her ultimate aim: to bring healthy vegan food to a community that has historically never gravitated towards it. Now, everybody wants it, thanks to the decadent creations and nostalgia-fuelled recipes.

Don’t miss: The One Night Stand burger, loaded with burger patties, bacon and cheese. The sweet potato pie is a must for dessert, if you have room. Even if you don’t grab a slice for later.

2. Samantha Edwards – New Breed Meats

A self-styled ‘health evangelist’, Samantha Edwards founded New Breed Meats, offering plant-based alternatives to conventional meat.  What makes Edwards so interesting is her intensely emotive journey, which she freely shares with people. Crediting plant-forward living with healing her mother of breast cancer, she considers animal-free diets “heaven sent” and has sought to make them as accessible as possible to all communities. Taking the time to get certified in plant nutrition, she has gone on to formulate not a meat substitute but a “new life”, as she calls it. Products can be sourced in the U.S.online, direct from New Breed.

Don’t miss: The Sizzling Sausage Patties. You’ll never crave a drive-thru breakfast sandwich again.

3. Carolyn Simon – Choose Life Foods

Affectionately known as the ‘Patty Queen’, Carolyn Simon has had a love affair with Jamaican patties since her childhood. When she moved to a plant-based diet, she found herself disappointed at the lack of authentic patties that gave her a nostalgic hit with every bite. Making them for herself, her friends and family soon suggested that she started selling them and Choose Life Foods was founded. Today, her Jamaican patties with no meat can be found in the freezer section of grocery stores across Canada and online.

Don’t miss: The beef patties are a no-brainer but don’t snooze on the Coconut Kale Delight. 

4. Cara Pitts – Southern Roots Vegan Bakery

It’s not a cliche to say that southern food has a little extra love in it. For Cara Pitts, it’s especially true, as she began developing vegan treats for her 98-year-old grandmother, who she was caring for. The decision came after Pitt’s husband, Marcus, embraced plant-based eating as a result of working in healthcare. Developing animal product-free doughnuts that she regularly took to the church led to Southern Roots Vegan Bakery. Today, cookies, doughnuts, and cakes, all vegan, are available for shipping across the U.S. Products can be frozen for up to three months, making them a different breed of bakery goodness.

Don’t miss: The Mary Lee’s Favorites Bundle. Named after Pitt’s grandmother, there’s a little extra heart and soul in every bite.

5. Janay Jones – Rooted Delights

Turning vegan wasn’t a struggle for Janay Jones, apart from one issue: she missed cheese. Fed up of disappointing flavours and mouthfeels, as well as allergen ingredients, she decided to tackle the problem head-on and founded Rooted Delights. Today, Jones creates small-batch vegan cheese wheels with oat milk bases. Products can be sourced at selected grocery stores in Richmond, Virginia, and foodservice partners use it as well. Online sales are currently paused.

Don’t miss: The Mozzah. It’s a melty, stretchy delight that amps up fresh pizzas and pasta dishes.

Check out more female founders, changing the alt-protein landscape with their companies.

The post 5 Black Female Entrepreneurs Changing the Vegan Food Industry appeared first on Green Queen.

Sandhya Sriram is co-founder and CEO at Shiok Meats, a Singapore-headquartered cultivated meat and seafood company founded in 2018 that has raised over $30 million in funding. Below, she talks to Green Queen‘s Sonalie Figueiras about where cell-based seafood is going, her views on the future of cultivated meat, how investors should be thinking about the space, and going public with the personal.

Editor’s Note: This interview was recorded live on Tuesday, May 30th 2023 during the City University of Hong Kong’s Webinar Series The Future of Food: Seeking Sustainable Solutions. Watch the full video interview, including a Q&A with questions from students across Asia HERE.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.

I’m thrilled to be here with you,  one of the pioneers of cultivated meat and seafood. I really appreciate you doing this. You’re always so generous with your time and your expertise and your leadership. I want to start by asking you, one of the early people in the space, and definitely in Asia, one of the first faces that anyone saw, how are we doing in terms of cultivated meat and cultivated seafood in Asia and also globally? Are we where you thought that we would be when you started? 

Sandhya Sriram: Sure, that’s a lot of complicated questions. [Laughs]. I think with any startup, any disruptive industry, any novel industry, you expect more downs than ups. And honestly, when I started in 2018, in this industry, I did not expect things to go as well as it went for specifically Shioak Meats and the way Singapore brought up the 30 by 2030 food story, and the amount of funding that went into this industry, and I’m not going to say it was easy capital raising, but definitely it was positive capital raising, with really good investors coming in, and you know, believing in this. 

So, I did not expect it to go that positively or that well, as as, as we started the company, I was expecting more down days.

In fact, even with the pandemic, fundraising wasn’t that bad, even with investors, you know, looking at you only on Zoom and not being able to taste your product or visit your facility. But this was the time when capital was easily available, there was plenty of capital and everybody was into food tech, right? 

GQ: What’s your outlook in terms of the timeline for the industry over the next few years?

Sandhya Sriram: I used to say this from day one: the world has a cycle of five years for a new technology or industry- it’s extremely sexy for five years. And then after that, it doesn’t go away, it’s still there, but something else is sexy. And when we started in 2018, around 2019, food tech became extremely sexy in Asia, be it the launch of Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, then Omni Foods, and then a lot of cultivated meat companies coming up, Singapore announcing the 30 by 2030 campaign, and approving the first cultivated product, so everything was extremely “up” for this industry. And we are sort of in the tail end of that five years, as you can see. And that has come with market changes, funding issues, companies not being able to scale…Regulatory-wise, it’s going the right way, but still, not many companies have gotten approval. So I would just say I’m not surprised. I’m not surprised about where we are. I’m not surprised by the challenges we have faced. I’m not surprised that we have seen the bad days. 

What I am very mindful of is over-promising by the industry- over-promising with the research that we’re doing or over-promising by the companies themselves. I think the market is correcting itself right now and in the industry, we are all keeping it truthful right now. 

But that also comes with a caveat- when you’re fundraising, you can’t tell an investor that you will make money for them 20 years down the line. You have to have some sort of a projection in place for them to see their return on investment. It’s quite complex, how do you talk about timelines when you launch and as you progress. 

I’m not surprised as to where we are. The future of alt protein is 100% there, I don’t think it’s ever going away. The next few years are all about who can make it and consolidation. Unfortunately, some companies are dying and some of that technology is dying. But all of that is part of any industry- it is what it is. You can’t expect all 100 [cultivated meat] companies to do well. It’s survival of the fittest. 

GQ: It’s very interesting to hear you say that you didn’t think it would go as well as it did. I think it’s also fair to say that there was probably a little bit of hype, there was also probably a lot of capital and interest in a field that let’s face it, most of us didn’t really understand five years ago and didn’t really know much about. In terms of concrete predictions, and I know predictions are a fool’s business to some extent, but just to understand from someone like you who’s in the space- do you anticipate there being more companies being founded in the cultivated industry? And do think more of those companies will be in Asia? 

Sandhya Sriram: I don’t foresee many companies starting up now, especially with the markets as they are. And I think the whole industry is going through a bit of skepticism with challenges around scaling and the issues that we’re facing in funding. So I don’t foresee too many companies starting new. But I do foresee ancillary companies starting, for example, media bioreactors infrastructure, a lot more contract manufacturing organizations being set up for scale-up, and offering infrastructure for production. And I also foresee a lot more food like traditional or established food companies coming into this space via consolidation. So that’s what I am sort of forcing for the next decade or so.

GQ: That’s really interesting. Just building on that, one thing that I’ve noticed about cultivated seafood, is that it’s one of the few sub-sectors of alt protein where we’ve seen Big Food companies in Asia, Big Seafood, specifically, get involved. So you Vinh Hoan in Vietnam and Thai Union getting involved in cultivated, whereas you don’t see as many Big Meat companies in Asia getting involved in cultivated meat. Why is that?

Sandhya Sriram: Actually, it’s a good question. Yes, traditional or Big Meat producers haven’t really gotten into the Asian side, but the Western meat companies have, like Tyson and Cargill, right? That’s also because if you look worldwide, seafood production is mainly in Asia, whereas meat production is not. If you look at the numbers, seafood is the most consumed protein in this part of the world and is mostly produced in Asia. So you have the big leagues like Thai Union and CP Food all getting involved here. 

It’s interesting because these companies, when they approached us or when we approached them, they said they understand that technology is the only way that they can keep their business long term, [it’s the only way] the way they can live up to the demand and the supply chain issues, that they can make sure that their businesses are still alive in 100 years to come. These companies know that disruption and technology is what’s going to happen. 

One of the companies that we were working with, and they are invested as well, they initially used to do proper traditional fishing and everything was done by hand, manually. They realized 10-20 years down the line, okay, this is not going to work because we are producing a lot more, we have larger fish farms, everything has to be automated now. So they set up automated lines for everything from de-heading the fish to scaling them to processing them to the packaging. And I’ve gone to their production facilities and they are extremely impressive- fully automated, much less manpower, very clean, and very well done. But they also know that may not be enough to supply the growing global population [and service] the growing demand in the future. 

Given that there are only so many fish farms you can set up, there are only so many animals in the ocean, they realized, okay, plant-based is one way to go, cultivated is another way to go. So why not explore these technologies? But they are not able to innovate internally, so they started investing in companies like ours. 

Eventually the idea is for them to use us as a production hub. They will do the distribution and the sales, which is exactly what we are looking for. We are technology people, we are not looking to sell our products large scale, at least I can speak for Shiok means our idea is to license out the technology so that food companies like Thai Union, CP and any other seafood company can use it in the future to actually produce seafood the way we do.

GQ: They get to do what they’re good at, which is logistics, sales, marketing, and you get to do what you’re good at. They are essentially, and you see this in a lot of industries, outsourcing the R&D, to some extent. 

You wrote a LinkedIn post a couple of weeks ago that was very moving and very transparent about the challenges that you have faced as a South Asian woman founder in Asia in a deep-tech space, and more specifically, in the cultivated meat and seafood space. I wanted to ask you about writing the post and some of the challenges that you’ve faced on your journey. What’s been the hardest part? What were you thinking about when you wrote that post?

Sandhya Sriram: So I have a rule. I don’t post anything when I’m emotional, when I’m angry when I’m bitter. All those emotions pass through and it’s very easy to get on social media to just express everything at that given point. But you’re not thinking straight when you’re extremely emotional. So I have a rule that I will always think, I will rest, I will take a few weeks, and then I will post something. And anything that I post is well thought-out, it’s not done in a hurry. 

I write it, I read it, I go through it, I go back and edit it. I don’t want to hurt anybody. That’s my ultimate aim at the end of the day. But I also want to be sure that I can tell what is my opinion, and I don’t think everybody needs to have the same opinion or agree with me. I think most of them will disagree with a lot of things that I say. But it’s my point of view. And I want to make sure that I’m able to voice it. Because I also realize there are 500 people that are not voicing it. And they’re struggling with the fact that they have to keep it within themselves. So I’m thinking about the 500 people that are probably going through the same thing that I’m going through. Over time, I’ve realized that people actually appreciate my candidness and openness. It’s not very easy as an Asian to do that. Actually in Asia, it’s not very well appreciated. 

GQ: Yes…as Asians and Asian women in particular, we are taught not to share our feelings in a public forum. 

Sandhya Sriram: I’ve been told by a lot of people in Asia: don’t share your troubles, share only the good things. And I think, well, that doesn’t inspire anybody. On Instagram or social media, we show only the good part of our lives. And we don’t show the bad part. I think, let’s share everything, right? Especially as an entrepreneur, when people are inspired by you, they should know what you’re going through all the things, the bad, the good, the ugly, the best, the better, and everything. And as I said, I don’t post when I’m bitter, angry or emotional. So that post took me three hours to write. And it took me a lot of editing, it took me a lot of back and forth, thinking should I do it? Should I not do it? What will that person think? What will this person think? What will my investors think? What will the media think? And then I said, you know what? I need to listen to myself for once. Let’s just do it because I have things to say. And it is honest things that I’ve been going through. And I personally put it there, it’s my opinion, it’s my experience, it’s personal. And it doesn’t have to essentially agree with all of you. But certain parts of it can agree with you, certain parts can not agree with you, it’s fine. That is what it is.

I would be happy to read somebody else’s thoughts as well about running a company. It’s not easy, running a company of 60 people, then letting go of 30 people. It’s not easy raising $30 million. It’s not easy being a pioneer.

You know, pioneer is used as a positive word, and actually, for me, it’s got a negative connotation. It’s like, oh, my God, you’re the first! And that means you have to break a lot more barriers and a lot more glass ceilings and face a lot more issues. 

Essentially, I’m a very resilient and very strong person, I can tolerate a lot. But that doesn’t mean I’m not human. So that post was about being human and being vulnerable. And also telling the world that I may look extremely strong, but I’m human and I have emotions also. And these are my thoughts, from my point of view. It is what it is, if you don’t like it, don’t read it. 

GQ: In the post, one thing that really came out was that for the past few years, Shiok has been working on scaling cell lines for the three crustaceans you are addressing, so lobster, shrimp and crab. And in the post, you talk about how it has been very, very challenging to scale those lines. Can you share more about this?

Sandhya Sriram: So I think around last year, we realized, okay, seafood is gonna take longer than [what we thought]. And by then we had already acquired the red meat company Gaia Foods. And honestly, when we acquired them, it was strategic, it was opportunistic, but it was also Plan B for us from day one. We knew that seafood is going to take time. 

To give a background to everybody listening here, seafood in general doesn’t have any background research. If you go to PubMed, or you go to Google, you can’t really find any research on stem cells for seafood, because stem cell research was done on animals that are closer to humans, like mammals, so that you understand human biology for human diseases and cancer treatment and all of that. So nobody really looked at stem cells from shrimps. 

So when we started Shiok, it was a blank whiteboard. As a scientist, that’s super exciting, because that means you can make new discoveries, new IP, new patents, all of that. But that’s also not the best start for a startup or a company, which needs to make money in three years, five years, ten years- whatever it is. 

So I think we went into it, we went into it knowing that it’s going to take time, but we thought it would be about four or five years until we figured it out. But last year, our fourth year, we said, okay, let’s take a pause here. We have tried as much as we can with the scale, and it’s not working, we are facing some issues that we could not have predicted that we would face because unless you scale up to a certain extent, you will not know. Only when you reach that destination, you realize, okay, there’s something wrong there. And then you have to figure out a different path to go for. So we said okay, we went two steps forward, but we also went six steps backwards. So let’s put a pause there. Let’s figure out that first step or second step again. 

But in the meantime, we are a startup, and we have raised cash. We are answerable to our investors, let’s try to see what else can be accelerated. We thought of many other things that we could do with our technology. But then we said, well, we have red meat. Red meat is a more established and studied technology. There are many companies that are doing red meat and are closer to commercialization. So why not push that, even though it’s not the most competitive, or the most unique technology? Let’s do that first. 

In the meantime, let’s figure out seafood. Nobody’s stopping seafood, we’re not stopping working on seafood, we just need more time. And so that was a conscious decision that we made in the company, to see what can be our first product. The survival of the company is very important. 

For me, it came to a point where as a CEO and a founder, I asked myself: should I run a company for X amount of time with 60 people? Or Should I run it for 10x the amount of time with only 10 people? I’m going to choose the latter, right?  I want the company to survive, the business to survive, the technology to survive. 

So it’s been hard, it’s been extremely hard, as you know from my LinkedIn post, but I think at the end of the day, my fiduciary duty is to the company and the business. So I will make the decision that I make for the company, not for me, not for individuals, it’s for the whole company.

Listen to the rest of the interview here.

The post Shiok Meat’s Sandhya Sriram Gets Personal: ‘As A Pioneer, You Have To Break A Lot More Barriers And A Lot More Glass Ceilings’ appeared first on Green Queen.

Scientific research might be considered a male-dominated arena, but it’s time to recognise that there are plenty of female pioneers to celebrate.

Strong women who identified a niche or subject that was ripe for further exploration have led the charge for progress for centuries.

The following scientific powerhouses have made leaps in their respective fields and brought global attention to some of the most important environmental issues facing humanity.

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A post shared by Dr. Jane Goodall (@janegoodallinst)

1. Dr. Jane Goodall

Scientific niche: Primatology and anthropology. Goodall is globally regarded as the foremost expert on chimpanzees.

Seminal work: Research conducted at the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania that disproved theories that only humans can work with tools and that chimpanzees are vegetarian. The research project would lead to her gaining a Cambridge University PhD, without first completing a bachelor’s qualification. 

In 1977, Goodall initiated the Jane Goodall Institute, a global organisation designed to support chimpanzee protection. It has become highly regarded for its conservation work in Africa. A number of rehabilitation, research and education centres have since followed.

The woman behind the white coat: Goodall grew up as an animal lover, following the gift of a stuffed chimpanzee, called Jubilee, from her father. She credits the figure as awakening her fascination with primates and, eventually, her move to Africa. An activist, vegetarian, Dame, and supporter of cultivated meat as a solution to animal agriculture, she remains an influential figure now in her late 80s. Some of us would still like to be Jane Goodall when we grow up.

2. Dr. Sylvia Earle

Scientific niche: Marine biology. Earle has been a National Geographic explorer-in-residence since 1998.

Seminal work: In 1970, Earle led an all-female team of aquanauts in a research project that saw them submerged in an installation, below the sea, for weeks. She had been rejected for the Tektite Project one year earlier but was asked to lead the subsequent Tektite II. the research studied underwater effects on humans, with a focus on diving impact. In 1979, Earle set a world record for the deepest untethered diving suit dive, reaching 381 metres. This remains unbeaten today.

Part of the founding team of Deep Ocean Engineering, Earle left in 1990 to take up position as chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She was the first woman to be given the role and advised on oil spill impact. When she left, she founded Deep Ocean Exploration and Research, to return to her roots in marine engineering. Her daughter has since taken the reins.

Earle is now a National Geographic explorer-in-residence and a regularly called-upon expert in the field of marine sustainability. In 2009 she was awarded the $1,000,000 TED prize, which she used to pursue ocean advocacy.

The woman behind the white coat: Vegetarian Earle is sometimes referred to as “Her Deepness” or “The Sturgeon General” by her peers. She has remained on numerous committees and boards designed to protect ocean habitats and was a featured expert in Netflix’s documentary Seaspiracy. 

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3. Dr. Katherine Hayhoe

Scientific niche: Atmospheric science.

Seminal work: Authoring more than 120 peer-reviewed research papers, alongside co-authoring a number of reports that have brought climate change into modern discourse. Her work for the National Climate Assessment report in 2014 led to her declaring that “Climate change is here and now, and not in some distant time or place. The choices we’re making today will have a significant impact on our future.”

Contributing to the IPCC report, Hayhoe was named as one of the UN’s Champions of the Earth in 2019. Her work has identified her as a leading expert and communicator on climate action. This in turn has resulted in her being an outspoken critic of climate deniers. The New York Times published a quote from her that made her feelings clear: “The six stages of climate denial are: It’s not real. It’s not us. It’s not that bad. It’s too expensive to fix. Aha, here’s a great solution (that actually does nothing). And – oh no! Now it’s too late. You really should have warned us earlier.”

Today, Hayhoe is a professor of political science at Texas Tech University, alongside being director of the Climate Service Center. She has remained in position as CEO of ATMOS Research and Consulting and last year joined Nature Conservancy as its chief scientist.

The woman behind the white coat: Hayhoe has juggled evangelical Christian beliefs with a career in science, citing her father as inspiration for the two being able to co-exist. She was invited to the White House when Barack Obama was President and spoke alongside Leonardo DiCaprio on the subject of climate action.

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4. Dr. Kimberley Miner

Scientific niche: Climate science.

Seminal work: Miner joined NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) following a stint at the U.S. Department of Defense. She had collaborated with JPL as part of her former role and made the permanent move to focus her efforts on earth science endeavours. Her current research project is based in the Arctic. The team recently published an article that highlighted the increasing risk of thawing permafrost, as a result of climate change.

Regarded globally as an important voice within the scientific community, Miner’s research has spanned new heights. Literally. Having reached the summit of Everest, a feat that gained her and her team a Guinness World Record, she revealed a compelling fact: pollutants and chemicals were present. Harmful PFAs were identified at such alarming levels that Miner conducted the tests three times, to be sure. 

Miner has been explicit in her support of rewilding as a potential climate solution. Her work to generate more nature preserves and reintroduce native plants across a variety of ecosystems is ongoing, alongside her Arctic research. She is a professor at the University of Maine as well.

The woman behind the white coat: When she isn’t climbing Everest or hunkering down at the Arctic, Miner is a fierce champion for women and girls in STEM. having received supportive mentorship early in her education and career, she is keen to pay it forward by breaking down gender stereotypes in the scientific community. 

5. Dr. Paola Arias

Scientific niche: Earth and atmospheric sciences plus geological sciences.

Seminal work: Arias looks at climate change and hydroclimate modelling in South America. She has two master’s degrees plus a doctorate. The latter came from her research into climate variability in monsoon and Amazonian regions. Her observations and understanding of water systems led to her being invited to co-author a chapter of the latest IPCC report. 

Arias is a professor at the University of Antioquia, where she heads the Environmental School. Outside from her educational demands, she is a regular guest speaker and expert voice regarding climate and hydrological change and their links to South America. The 2019 TEDxBogotaMujeres event hosted her as a scientific expert.

The woman behind the white coat: Arias is the first Colombian woman to ever be invited to contribute to an IPCC report. She represents not only females in science, but also LATAM expertise.

6. Sunita Narain

Scientific niche: Environmentalism.

Seminal work: Narain started working at the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in 1982. Having completed her studies at the University of Delhi, learning remotely while still in position, she co-edited the State of India’s Environmental Report in 1985. This led to in-depth studies into forest management systems and natural resource allocation. This would prove to be the foundation for specialising in identifying links between environment and development, within sustainable frameworks. 

In 2012, Narain wrote the 7th State of India’s Environment Reports, Excreta Matters, which looked at India’s water supply and pollution levels in urban areas. Still working for the CSE, she has masterminded numerous research projects surrounding domestic and global environmental concerns. A prominent paper revealed high pesticide levels found in American soft drinks, including Pepsi and Coke.

A leading expert on water harvesting, Narain is featured in Before the Flood, a climate documentary also featuring Leonardo DiCaprio. In it, she talked about how the Moonsoon in India has been directly impacted by climate change and the resulting difficulties faced by domestic farmers and food security concerns. 

2016 saw Narain declared as one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People.

The woman behind the white coat: A staunch environmentalist, Narain is a keen cyclist. She was hit by a car in 2013 by a driver that failed to stop, resulting in numerous body and face injuries. She remains a cyclist today.

Lead image created in Canva.

The post 6 Female Scientists Making the World More Sustainable appeared first on Green Queen.

Three months after the vegan dairy company filed a lawsuit against its founder and former CEO, both parties say they have resolved all disputes and withdrawn all legal claims.

In social media post published by both Miyoko Schinner and the company earlier today, both parties shared the following statement:

Miyoko’s Creamery and Miyoko Schinner are pleased that they have resolved all legal disputes between them and that they have withdrawn all legal claims made against each other.

Miyoko’s Creamery acknowledges the tremendous creativity, hard work, and integrity of its founder, Miyoko Schinner, a true pioneer in vegan creamery products, and appreciates her many contributions to the company over the years.

Miyoko Schinner appreciates the dedicated team of people at Miyoko’s Creamery and their commitment to continuing her legacy through sustained and continued excellence in manufacturing, developing and selling vegan creamery products.

Miyoko and the company wish each other well as they go their separate ways.

This ends the legal dispute that began when the company filed a lawsuit naming Schinner as the defendant on March 19th of this year, exactly three months ago, alleging breach of contract and company IP misappropriation. Further complaints listed included Violation of Defend Trade Secrets Act, Violation of the Uniform Trade Secrets Act, Breach of Duty of Loyalty and Breach of Promissory Note.

At the time, Schinner posted a strongly worded social media statement, writing: “I am shocked that certain board members have decided to file a lawsuit against me. There are wild untruths about me that are designed to destroy me and get me out of the way. I have been cooperative with the Company since my termination…While I am eager to bring the truth to light, I am going to move with the care necessary to ensure that I am operating in accordance with my fiduciary duties as a Director and with applicable legal rules and guidelines. (while I remain a Director, I am uncertain of how much sway or say I actually have). As always, I thank you for your trust, your patience, and your support.” 

Schinner had been removed as CEO back in June 2022, though no public announcement had been made. In March, Schinner countersued, alleging wrongful termination and claimed that sexism was to blame. She said she was forced out after filing multiple HR complaints about male executives who “openly denigrated women.” She secured representation by The Bloom Firm, home of celebrity lawyer Lisa Bloom who controversially advised Harvey Weinstein early on during his sexual abuse scandal and whose mother is renowned feminist lawyer Gloria Allred.

The company, which was founded by longtime vegan chef and animal rights activist Schinner in 2014, pioneered vegan cheese and butter made from organic and wholefood ingredients. As of today, its products can be found in over 20,000 retailers worldwide and it has raised over $78.6 million worth of funding.

The company recently unveiled a new look with more minimalist branding and an updated logo.

The post Miyoko’s Creamery: Plant-Based Dairy Founder And Company She Started Agree To Resolve All Lawsuits And Withdraw Legal Claims appeared first on Green Queen.