Minimizing Methane Through Food Waste Solutions

The Catalytic Grant Fund

Minimizing Methane Through Food Waste Solutions

Meet the Grantee Cohort

The grantees selected for this ReFED Catalytic Grant Fund open call, Minimizing Methane Through Food Waste Solutions, offer solutions that address methane emissions in two critical areas: advancing food recycling infrastructure to keep organic waste out of landfills and reducing methane emissions across beef and dairy supply chains through innovative feed and waste-to-value solutions.

Black Earth Compost has scaled across the Northeast by prioritizing affordable food scrap collection, decentralized compost facilities, contamination removal, and customer trust. With ReFED's support, they will build a mobile trash removal machine proven for food waste mixed with compostable packaging.

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Compost Research & Education Foundation (CREF) is modernizing the nation’s compost testing standards to strengthen compost quality, improve measurement methodologies, and help build greater trust and scalability across the composting industry.

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Fermeate converts whey byproducts from dairy production into valuable food-grade ingredients and proteins through fermentation, diverting high-organic-load waste streams away from wastewater systems where they can generate methane emissions.

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Gilly makes cattle feed ingredients that unlock the nutritional value of agricultural byproducts like tomato pomace, grape pomace, and soybean hulls, while reducing methane intensity.

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Golden State Foods is developing replication toolkits and industry-facing resources to help reduce beef waste across its operations and share learnings broadly with major industry groups, including the Meat Institute and the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef.

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NewTerra Compost is proactively building infrastructure in “composting deserts” like Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, markets with no regulatory pressure but clear operational need, demonstrating that viable service models can be established ahead of policy mandates.

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Organicycle is pioneering a partnership model with Waste Management to co-locate composting operations at existing waste sites, reducing permitting friction and accelerating infrastructure buildout in regions like Michigan and Northern Indiana.

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Rust Belt Riders (RBR) is building a future where food scraps become soil and workers become owners. RBR is a worker-owned cooperative that leads sustainable organic waste management in Northeast Ohio by partnering with food manufacturers, hospitals, schools, restaurants, municipalities, and residents. Food scraps composted by RBR are recycled into living soils that serve the community as Tilth Soil.

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University of Georgia researchers are transforming surplus fruits, vegetables, and other agricultural byproducts into climate-smart cattle feed through a fermentation platform that produces medium-chain fatty acids shown to improve feed efficiency and reduce methane emissions from cattle.

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Current Open Call

Minimizing Methane Through Food Waste Solutions

Congratulations to the grantees for this open call!

Reducing food loss and waste is one of the most powerful levers to cut methane emissions. ReFED’s research shows that scaling food recycling and diversion is one of the most immediate, cost-effective strategies to reduce methane today, while tackling loss within beef and dairy systems can unlock major long-term impact.

This open call for ReFED’s Catalytic Grant Fund was seeking bold solutions and initiatives in two high-impact areas:

  • Advancing food recycling: Enhancing sorting, decontamination, processing, and access to create more effective and efficient systems.

  • Reducing methane in the beef and dairy sectors: Cutting loss and waste by lowering animal mortality, improving supply chain efficiency to get more products to market, preventing food waste at the household level, and reducing enteric emissions through climate-smart feed additives derived from waste streams.

To learn more about this open call theme and the challenges that ReFED aims to solve through the Catalytic Grant Fund, please visit the FAQ section.

Independent Review Committee

Charles Brooke

Program Lead, Enteric Methane, Spark Climate Solutions

Kaylyn Fern

Director of Strategic Philanthropy, Wana Brands Foundation

Laura Ginsburg

Center Lead, Northeast Dairy Business Innovation Center

Nora Goldstein

Editorial Chairperson of BioCycle & Principal of BioCycle Consulting

Darby Hoover

Senior Resource Specialist, Nature and Environmental Health, NRDC

Paula Luu

Managing Director, BioCycle

Michael Martinez

Program Manager, Food and Agriculture, 11th Hour Project

Keith Nantz

Co-owner, Nexus Beef

Carlos M. Saviani

Beef Sustainability Director – Global Impact, Cargill

Derek Tepe

Project Manager, Global Ag Methane, Environmental Defense Fund

Nancy Whiteman

CEO & Founder, Wana Brands

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Nominate someone for the independent review committee

The Independent Review Committee is a highly valued group of leaders and experts coming from a variety of backgrounds; tailored for each open call, it serves as an integral part of the broader team managing the Catalytic Grant Fund by contributing to the overall grantee selection process. If you are interested in participating as an Independent Reviewer or know of someone that you’d like to nominate for the Committee, please contact Angel Veza at [email protected].

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Contribute to the ReFED Catalytic Grant Fund

We are deeply grateful to our funder partners who make the Catalytic Grant Fund possible, sharing our mission and vision for a more sustainable, equitable, and inclusive food system.

Learn more about how you can be part of this initiative by contacting Sam Buck, ReFED's Director of Development & Strategic Impact at [email protected].

Anchoring Investors
Ballmer
Toast.org
Google
Partnering Investors
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Learn About Our Previous Open Call

Maximizing the Harvest

On-farm produce loss is a major contributor to food waste, with U.S. farms generating more than 17 million tons of surplus food in 2023 alone. This surplus—nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables—represents a missed opportunity to reach its original intended consumer, all while millions face hunger. ReFED’s Catalytic Grant Fund is seeking innovative technologies, solutions, and initiatives that can reduce on-farm waste, maximize the value of surplus produce, and establish new market opportunities while increasing profitability for farmers. Join us in eliminating and valorizing on-farm food loss!

Meet the Cohort

ReFED is working with food businesses, funders, researchers, food waste solution providers, policymakers, and more to solve food waste.

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