EARTH DAY FOODIES CHANGE THE WORLD
For nine years, Vancouver’s Brianne Miller travelled the world working as a marine biologist. Through her fieldwork, she observed how plastics that entered ocean ecosystems were wreaking havoc on fish, turtle, and marine-mammal populations.
The sheer volume of plastic in the seas was driven home to her while she was on a boat leaving Sipadan Island on her way to a popular diving site. The island is off the east coast of Borneo.
“If you’re looking out, the ocean looks like it’s a pristine, blue tropical paradise,” Miller told the Georgia Straight by phone. “As you turn your gaze downward, it’s a sea of plastic and garbage: everything from leftover food and whole bananas to shoes and straws and a whole lot of food packaging. That was one image that stood out in my mind.”
In recent years, there have been several stories in the news about beached whales with plastic bags and other debris in their stomachs. And Miller has witnessed plastics piling up on a remote beach in Haida Gwaii, where no human could be seen for kilometres.
“Plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces,” Miller explained. “Then these smaller pieces are ingested by animals that are lower on the food chain.”
She pointed out that these “microplastics” leach harmful chemicals into smaller fish and other sea creatures. They, in turn, are eaten by larger marine animals, where these toxins bioaccumulate, and because the fishing industry often targets larger species, this has consequences on human health.
“I wanted to tackle that problem with a practical, concrete solution that people could implement in their everyday lives,” Miller said.
This was the impetus behind the founding of Zero Waste Market in 2015. Her mission is to halt the distribution of plastics that are causing so much harm in the sea.
“You can picture us as a fullfledged grocery store without any packaging,” Miller said.
This means that fruits, vegetables, other food products, and even liquids—including vinegar, olive oil, molasses, shampoo, conditioner, and cleaning supplies—are sold either in reusable jars or to people who bring their own containers.
Zero Waste Market has been operating as a pop-up shop. The next two are coming to Earnest Ice Cream
(1829 Quebec Street) on Earth Day this Saturday (April 22), followed by another opening at Patagonia Vancouver (1994 West 4th Avenue) next Friday (April 28).
“We’re trying to encourage behaviour change,” Miller said. “A lot of that boils down to education.”
Her first touchpoint with the business world was Futurpreneur Canada, a nonprofit organization that provides financing, education, and mentorship to young entrepreneurs. Futurpreneur provided Zero Waste Market with its first loan of $15,000, which was leveraged with an additional $30,000 from the federal government’s Business Development Bank of Canada.
When Futurpreneur lends money to an entrepreneur, it also connects them with a business mentor for two years. This is one of several reasons why another health-oriented B.C. food business, the Green Moustache Organic Juice and Live Food Bar, continues thriving more than three years after it began in Whistler.
Launched by Nicolette Richer and her husband, Pierre, it has expanded to four outlets with the help of Steve Sabey, a retired energy executive and Futurpreneur mentor. Richer credited Sabey for assisting her business in a wide range of areas, including human resources, how it spends money, and fielding inquiries from investors.
Richer ran a health-consulting company for 10 years, providing a metabolic nutrient-therapy program to clients with chronic diseases and cancer. The goal was to detoxify their bodies to promote healing.
“It’s really using food as medicine, which is still a relatively new concept in our society,” Richer said.
She acknowledged that it was
a challenge for clients to prepare healthy, low-sodium meals without any refined processed foods or coloured food additives.
“I decided to start the Green Moustache to be able to give my clients, my community, and my family a place where we can get really clean, healthy, healing foods,” she stated.
The company name originated from when her youngest daughter, then two years old, spilled a green smoothie on her face, giving her a huge green moustache.
Another Futurpreneur-funded and -mentored entrepreneur who is trying to improve public health is Tara Bosch. In 2015, the former UBC arts student founded Smartsweets, which aims to reduce the consumption of sugar-filled candy across North America.
“The vision for Smartsweets is to become the global leader in innovating smart confectionary products that kick sugar,” Bosch said. “Alongside that, the mission is really to educate the public about the impact sugar has on our health—making smaller, smarter choices that kick sugar, allowing us to have a healthy relationship with food and, ultimately, with ourselves.”
She started small, buying a gummy-bear mould through Amazon and testing recipes in her kitchen. Her first commercial product has no sugar, no sugar alcohols, no artificial sweeteners, and is Gmo–free, gluten-free, and allergen-friendly.
Each bag contains 24 grams of plant-based fibre, two grams of natural sugar from fruit extracts, and five grams of protein. The product is available in stores across Canada.
Bosch credited her grandmother for getting her interested in creating healthy sweets. “She said that she regretted having so much excess sugar because of how it has impacted her health.”