š Making animal free meat possible #10
Capturing microplastics from wastewater and real-time soil analysis
Hey!
Welcome to the first regular ātings newsletter of 2022, ātings #10 š„³
I hope youāve had a great start to the year so far and that youāre ready to discover many more climate tech startups together with me this year.
This week we are having a look at š§ŖĀ Multus Media who are developing an animal-free growth serum for meat cultivation, š§ŗĀ Matter. who are tackling the microplastic problem in wastewater through patented filtration technology, and šĀ Stenon who are enabling smart farming with their sensor hardware.
As a little āting Iām using this platform to shoutout the Norrsken Impact Accelerator who have just opened applications for the 2022 batch!
š§ŖĀ Multus Media - Making animal free meat possible
I think by now every single one of us is aware of the fact that our meat consumption needs to decrease in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, with a population that is set to grow to almost 10 billion by 2050, requiring food production to increase by 70%, and average incomes going up, global meat consumption is going to grow significantly (there is a pretty clear positive correlation between meat consumption and GDP per capita). One way to address the environmental impact of meat production is to eliminate animals from the process. Being able to grow beef without the insane amount of methane produced from cow farts will be a game changer. Greenhouse gas emissions, land use and water use could be reduced by more than 90% by growing meat in a lab.
The process of growing meat in a lab is quite complex and I am by no means an expert. To boil it down to three components, you would need stem cells from the respective animal whose meat you are trying to grow, growth medium to allow the stem cell to replicate and differentiate into muscle or fat cells, and a bioreactor to do it all in. A key factor inhibiting scaling this technology is the growth medium. Currently most cultured meat is grown using fetal bovine serum (FBS), which is refined from the blood of unborn cow foetuses harvested when their mothers are slaughtered. This kind of defeats the purpose of growing meat without the need for animals because to do so you need the blood of unborn baby cows š¤ÆĀ The ethics and irony of this coupled with the price of $200 per litre of FBS (it can take up to 50 litres to make one kg of meat) presents a massive challenge. If you need to harvest unborn cows and nobody can afford it, then the decrease in emissions doesnāt matter.
Multus Media, a UK-based startup, is developing a plant-based alternative to FBS that not only takes cow foetuses out of the equation, but also addresses the cost factor and improves upon FBS itself. According to Cai Linton, Multus Mediaās CEO, a key issue with traditional growth serums that they are addressing is the rate at which it depletes. Multusā Proliferum M will last twice as long as traditional formulations, which would significantly reduce the amount of growth media needed to grow the same amount of cultured meat. A reduction in quantity of growth medium needed and a reduction in price will be a great step towards reaching cost parity with traditionally grown meat. Multusā and Caiās goal is to see cultured meat in supermarkets by 2027.
š§ŗĀ Matter. - Capturing microplastics from wastewater
The amazon rainforest is often called the lungs of the earth as it ābreathesā in large quantities of CO2 and ābreathesā out as much as 20% of the oxygen in our planetās atmosphere. I think the moniker āthe lungs of the earthā could be given to a different, even bigger source of oxygen, the ocean. At least half of our earths oxygen, and as much as 80% according to some scientists, comes from the ocean.
The majority of this oxygen is produced by plankton, but the balance of the ecosystem is being threatened by microplastics. Microplastics are small fragments of plastic typically smaller than 5mm in length. There are two types of plankton in the sea: phytoplankton which are microscopic plants that form the basis of oceanic food chains and zooplankton which are tiny animals that feed on phytoplankton which in turn get eaten by bigger animals. Zooplankton can mistakenly consume microplastics instead of phytoplankton, and with an increasing amount of microplastics ending up in our oceans marine nutrient cycles and oxygen levels will get affected.
One source of microplastics that can be addressed, according to UK-based startup Matter. is the microfibres & plastics found in wastewater. Every time we wash clothing or fabrics we release microfibres into the water. In a 2021 study of Arctic water, 96 of 97 water samples contained microplastics of which 92% were fibres where a majority of them were made up of polyester. Matter. are addressing this plastic problem through the development of capturing and recycling technology for wastewater. They have started through launching Gulp, a patented microplastic filter that can be fitted to any washing machine with no need for a plumber to install it. The filter is 100% reusable and simply needs to be emptied every 20 washes. They are currently working with various researchers and universities to develop technologies to reuse the captured microfibres to create a fully closed loop system. If this technology can scale for commercial wastewater treatment plants, plastic pollution from washing clothes and wastewater in general could be significantly reduced!
šĀ Stenon - Real-time soil analysis
As we saw in the first story of this newsletter, food production will need to increase by 70% by 2050 to satisfy our growing population. To be able to satisfy this growing demand we canāt just use more and more land since 50% of habitable land is already being used for agriculture (37% is forests, 11% shrub, and just 1% is used for urban & built-up land).
Fortunately, precision agriculture, autonomous farming, and regenerative agriculture are hot topics on the table of the agriculture industry. A key to transforming an old industry, not just in average age of farmers but also one that has been around for much of human history, and taking it to the 21st century is the data required to power innovative solutions. Innovation in farming and agriculture will not only help us in meeting the growing demand for food but also help address greenhouse gas emissions.
Nitrous oxide (N2O) is one of the largest sources of agricultural emissions and mainly comes from the soil as a result of using fertilisers (synthetic and organic). The issue with N2O is that it has 300 times the warming effect on our atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Fertiliser use has been steadily increasing in recent decades in large part due to industrial farming where over-application of fertiliser to boost yields is common. Both synthetic and organic fertiliser increase the amount of nitrogen in the soil, which helps plants grow faster but it also gets released into our atmosphere in the form of N2O.
Now, coming back to the tech aspect of improving farming, if farmers are able to gain detailed insights into the nutrient profiles of their farmlands then the right fertiliser can be applied in the right places at the right amount, reducing N2O emissions and saving farmers money. Testing soil characteristics has traditionally involved sending soil samples to labs, which is both expensive and time consuming. A german startup Stenon is looking to change this with their real-time soil analysis technology. They have developed a handheld contraption called FarmLab that farmers can stick directly into the soil they want to test and get an insight into a variety of nutrient profiles and soil parameters. The data collected with the FarmLab allows farmers to map out their fields and see detailed fertiliser application maps. Farmers can save time as they no longer need external laboratories for soil testing, save money by fertilising the right amount, and increase crop yield.
šĀ A little āting - Norrsken Impact Accelerator 2022
The Norrsken Impact Accelerator seeks to back the most promising early-stage impact startups to help them scale. Startups can apply for $125k in pre-seed/seed funding and mentorship from a top-notch roster of founders, entrepreneurs, and investors. Applications just opened and close at the end of February 2022 - find out more on their website norrskenimpactaccelerator.com or watch this short promo video.
āWeāre looking for startups that have the potential to drive lasting, generational positive change to the world, whilst simultaneously building successful, rapidly scalable businessesā ā Funda Sezgi, Norrsken Impact Accelerator managing director and co-founder.
And, no, this is not an ad, I just really like what they are doing š¤
Thank you for making it to the end!
If you happened to enjoy reading this, why not send it around to a few friends so that more people can get an insight into what is being done to preserve the future of our planet š
Until next time, much love,
Pascal š