With so much food waste going to rot in landfills, a company called Veles wanted to repurpose those sugars and acids and turn them into something useful. Today, their all-purpose cleaner is made exclusively from 100% food waste, along with a selection of sustainably sourced natural fragrances—and lab tests show it to be effective 99% of the time at cleaning tough dirt from multiple surfaces.
Most household cleaners contain up to 90% water, a valuable resource in any country—but all the water in the Veles product is directly derived from the food waste. Co-founders of the New York–based eco-company, Amanda Weeks and Brett Van Aalsburg, have partnered with food waste collectors across the city to bring the contents of food waste bins in corporate cafeterias throughout Manhattan to use in their production process.
Using a simple acid fermentation process, key cleaning ingredients can be teased out of food waste. These include water, lactic acid, acetic acid, one of the few compounds in vinegar, and alcohol. Together they make up 97% of the Veles cleaner, with natural fragrances representing the remaining 3%.
The environmental benefits of the Veles cleaner go beyond just increasing the amount of food waste being recycled. It raises awareness of the benefits of bio-matter as a cleaning agent; reduces a potent source of methane (CH4) a harmful greenhouse gas, which emanates from food waste accumulating in landfills; and also removes the need for processed ingredients to be shipped to the Veles production facility in Newark from faraway places, reducing CO2 emissions in the transportation sector.