Partnership Creates First Compostable Circular Sourced Indoor Growing Media

NEW YORK, NY, June 23, 2022 — Re-Nuble, a NYC-based agriculture technology company, is excited to announce an exclusive partnership with a Santa Cruz, California-based circular materials company, Cruz Foam, which offers companies a frictionless transition to circular materials. As Re-Nuble pioneers the reutilization of localized and food safe, vegetative food waste into sustainable growing products for indoor growers, the partnership with Cruz Foam’s development expertise and Re-Nuble’s commercialization of organic inputs and ReNu Terra, a highly engineered, fully traceable and compostable grow media that eliminates food waste and creates an efficient closed-loop agriculture system.

WHAT IS GROWING MEDIA?

Quite simply, growing media is a container for plants that provides physical support for the plant, facilitates root growth, and delivers nutrients, water, and air to the plant through its roots.

CIRCULAR MATERIALS

Currently there are two types of material flows that occur in society, linear and a limited amount of reuse and recycling. An aspiration is to have closed loop material flows that underpin a circular economy by keeping the matter making up materials in use as products longer and maximizing matter’s regeneration into high-value products at the product’s end of life. The basic elements of a circular economy are to: prioritize regenerative resources, design for the future, preserve and extend what’s already made, rethink the business models, use waste as a resource, incorporate digital technology, and collaborate to create joint value.

PARTNERSHIP

This partnership emphasizes the importance of changing consumption patterns and paves the way for sustainable waste management. Additionally, it is a crucial step in alleviating climate-related risks, particularly those related to current industry grow media (or “substrates”).

“While there currently exists several grow media options for indoor growers, the industry lacks a truly sustainable grow media. There is an urgency and dire need to develop a fully compostable grow media solution. What really sets ours apart is that not only are we recirculating food waste back into the system, but it’s a fully compostable and inert media that can return the benefits of chitin (e.g. resilient against pests and disease) to plants, while reducing an indoor grower’s waste volume,” said Tinia Pina, Re-Nuble Founder and CEO. Chitin also boosts plant immunity, quality, and drought resistance naturally.

More importantly, being manufactured in the U.S., Re-Nuble can guarantee to meet their partners’ and growers’ supply demand while being lower cost to current alternatives such as peat, which is an extremely environmentally exhaustive material. “It’s incredibly important for us to work with partners that mutually prioritize traceability, ethical sourcing, and viability.” said Pina.

Currently, one of the grow media that dominates the industry is peat. However, despite peatlands storing approximately 30% of the world’s soil, when farmed for agriculture needs, peat changes from being a carbon sink, into instead, a greenhouse gas emitter, making it severely environmentally detrimental in the long-run. Drained peatlands release approximately 1.9 gigatonnes of CO2e annually, which amounts to 5% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. This is a stark lack of correlation considering damaged peatlands make up just 0.3% of global landmass.

ReNu Terra, the first ever compostable grow media, is a game-changer. Not only is it compostable but it is also PFA and heavy-metal free. Cruz Foam has passed ASTM D6400 and D6868 testing and is a USDA Certified Biobased Product.

“Re-Nuble products are a fantastic and creative example of an innovative ag-tech product made from Cruz Foam’s circular materials. We are excited to partner with Re-Nuble in introducing this indoor growing industry ‘first’ for more sustainable food production. We believe examples like the Re-Nuble story will inspire many industry leaders to examine how sustainable materials like Cruz Foam can transform their businesses and improve life on our planet,” said John Felts, CEO, Cruz Foam.

According to Pina, “Our customers need long-term supply security for their growing needs due to increased demand and supply chain delays. Shipping grow media from other parts of world is not sustainable. We solve that by using localized waste streams as the input, and through our business model, we are able to replicate this production process anywhere in the world.”

Felts adds, “It’s challenging to find a grow media that composts efficiently. We need to remember, everything that is compostable is biodegradable, but not everything that is biodegradable is compostable. With our technology breakthrough, we can guarantee that ReNu Terra is fully compostable.

As a triple bottom line circular materials company, Cruz Foam diverts waste material from the food industry and enables the full utilization of the existing packaging supply chain to have a “frictionless” transition to the green economy.

The anti-peat awareness movement is growing across the world, such as the UK, where specific standards are being put into place to ban peat. Through this partnership, ReNu Terra will further the impact of the closed-loop agriculture movement by transforming the behavior of indoor growers through sustainable agricultural practices. Practices that preserve nutrient and carbon levels and address long-term demand for farming needs.

ABOUT RE-NUBLE
Re-Nuble is an MWBE-certified social enterprise and agricultural technology company that uses organic cycling science™ technology to reutilize unrecoverable vegetative food byproducts into a platform of sustainable technologies for indoor growing. Our closed-loop process transforms unrecoverable food byproducts into organic goods while eliminating landfill waste and greenhouse gasses. We were founded with the mission to help global agricultural communities reutilize localized food waste for more transparently sustainable, environmentally-friendly growing practices.

For more information, please visit www.Re-Nuble.com and follow Re-Nuble on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

ABOUT CRUZ FOAM
Cruz Foam is a circular materials company that produces ASTM compostable, protective packaging foam, and other eco-friendly solutions that offer a sustainable alternative to petroleum-based products. Cruz Foam’s patented products are circular in nature using biopolymers found in nature to create a compostable material using the existing supply chain and at a similar cost. Cruz Foam is currently working with consumer-packaged goods, electronics, appliance, and durable goods companies. Cruz Foam is a mission-driven company creating impact at scale by empowering industry leaders to be the catalyst for a cleaner environment. Cruz Foam is headquartered in Santa Cruz, California.

For more information, please visit www.cruzfoam.com and follow Cruz Foam on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Cruz Foam Partners with Re-Nuble