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How Can We Decarbonize the Food System? 🐄 🌱 🍳

90 billion pounds of food is wasted every year and 44 million people in the U.S. don’t know where their next meal is coming from. 4 billion people worldwide rely on nitrogen fertilizer made with fossil fuels. Today we’re highlighting two orgs, Switch Bioworks and Feeding America, fighting to decarbonize the food space and reroute food to the people who need it most. Keep reading to hear about Episode 1 of Reinventing Tomorrow and Episode 3 of Where the Internet Lives.

Author

Camryn Kirk
October 30, 2024

— Written by Camryn Kirk

Reinventing Tomorrow Season 2 is Here! 🎬

It’s time to get to work! 🧪⚡Let’s build the tomorrow we want to live in. Season 2 of our series REINVENTING TOMORROW is here, and it’s bringing a dose of hope. Learn more about the innovators across the globe, who are working on solutions to improve resilience and decrease the carbon impacts of critical needs like food and shelter. Stay tuned, you won’t want to miss this 💪

Switching It Up! 🧫

Was your breakfast grown with fossil fuels? (Hint: probably) Today, 4 billion people rely on nitrogen fertilizer to grow their food, and nitrogen fertilizer is made from fossil fuels. Admittedly, we were blown away when we learned about Switch Bioworks. They are a biotech startup whose mission is to feed the world sustainably 🔬 Our latest episode of Reinventing Tomorrow, unpacks what they’re cooking up to decarbonize our food system. Switch has created a more sustainable fertilizer by engineering the microbes that naturally live on the roots of plants. This cuts greenhouse gas emissions by A LOT. If we can create more sustainable fertilizer, we can help decarbonize the food system + feed more people with fewer climate risks🧑‍🔬

👀 FYI:

If you haven’t read our newsletters recently, Where the Internet Lives is an award-winning mini-documentary series and podcast centered around Google’s data centers and the AI they power. Each week, we’ll be dropping a new video and podcast episode, taking you on an eye-opening journey into how Google’s data infrastructure is shaping community resilience when facing wildfires, power grid overloads, plastic garbage, air pollution, and food waste 👏👀

Hungry for Episode 3? 🍽️

Episode 3 of Where The Internet Lives is out now and it’s juicy. 

An estimated 90 billion pounds of food is wasted every year. Despite this, 44 million people in this country don’t know where their next meal is coming from. How can we be wasting so much food when so many people are facing food insecurity? Episode 3 of WTIL highlights how Feeding America, the largest charitable org in the U.S., is using Google’s AI and data-powered tools to solve food waste and food insecurity in America. They can re-route food to exactly where it’s needed and help solve food bank inefficiencies by providing accessible data to the public. These huge supply chain issues must be corrected so we can decrease the amount of food waste while also decreasing the number of hungry people.

We’re excited about these climate innovations and feel good about the progress being made thanks to biotech, AI, and data. Although not all problems in the food industry have been solved, Switch Bioworks and Feeding America’s commitment to creating breakthroughs are steps in the right direction. Awesome job! 👏👏👏

Watch more at Reinventing Tomorrow's playlist

Listen to WTIL’s podcast here

👀 Some Good News Stories You Might Have Missed This Week 🗞️📺:

Want to learn more about climate innovations? Drop a reply and let us know! 💬