Your next beer might be brewed from discarded pasta. No joke—Beyond Belief Brewing is doing exactly that. Meanwhile, B-SIDES just launched Crunch Puffs made from oat milk byproducts. In 2025, food waste isn’t a flaw—it’s the feature.
Upcycling isn’t just good for the planet—it’s marketing gold. When every other snack claims to be “clean,” “plant-based,” or “gluten-free,” ingredient origin becomes the new flex. Saying “this came from oat milk waste” beats “made with chickpea flour” any day.
Upcycled ingredients give brands more than eco-cred. They create a built-in story you can wrap messaging, PR, and packaging around. It’s product dev as storytelling. And right now? Storytelling sells.
A few more doing it right:
- Confetti Snacks turns surplus vegetables into colorful chips—earning shoutouts from Forbes for its mission.
- ReGrained built snack bars from spent brewing grains, and now licenses their upcycling tech to others.
- Renewal Mill transforms soybean pulp (okara) into high-fiber baking mixes. Female-founded and full-circle.
Whether it’s pasta beer or pulp cookies, the playbook is clear: build better-for-you products with a better-for-everyone supply chain—and make that story loud enough to hear on shelf.
