Reducing Food Waste: Ben Mand Of Harmless Harvest On How They Are Helping To Eliminate Food Waste

An Interview With Martita Mestey

Leadership in my profession is about having the conviction and responsibility to make the right decisions, not those that are easiest and most expedient. It’s about being authentic and doing my part to make the world a better place.

It has been estimated that each year, more than 100 billion pounds of food is wasted in the United States. That equates to more than $160 billion worth of food thrown away each year. At the same time, in many parts of the United States, there is a crisis caused by people having limited access to healthy & affordable food options. The waste of food is not only a waste of money and bad for the environment, but it is also making vulnerable populations even more vulnerable.

Authority Magazine started a new series called “How Restaurants, Grocery Stores, Supermarkets, Hospitality Companies and Food Companies Are Helping To Eliminate Food Waste.” In this interview series, we are talking to leaders and principals of Restaurants, Grocery Stores, Supermarkets, Hospitality Companies, Food Companies, and any business or nonprofit that is helping to eliminate food waste, about the initiatives they are taking to eliminate or reduce food waste.

As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ben Mand.

Ben Mand is the CEO of Harmless Harvest, a pioneer in premium coconut water and plant-based dairy products. Harmless has been built on a fundamental belief in “constructive capitalism” — an ecosystem-based approach to business that integrates all the stakeholders to deliver better products and outcomes for all.

During his time at the helm of the company, which more than doubled its business in four years, Ben has successfully transformed Harmless Harvest from a brand solely focused on coconut water to a leader in premium functional beverages and plant-based dairy. Ben’s commitment to the company’s mission-led objectives has resulted in over $1 million invested in Fair For Life and community support initiatives, a transition to regenerative organic agricultural practices, conversion to 100% rPET bottles, and bringing Harmless Harvest dramatically closer to its goal of 100% zero coconut waste to landfill.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Most of my career has been dedicated to building and leading responsible businesses. I grew up in rural Wisconsin and spent much of my early years on my grandparents’ dairy farm. In the late 1990’s I was working as a consultant and I took a sabbatical to volunteer at an organic coffee farm in Costa Rica. Since then I’ve been extremely interested in the dynamics and nuances of sustainable farming and for the past 20 years I’ve worked in various marketing and innovation roles — at General Mills, Johnson & Johnson, etc. — focusing on not only sales and growth, but social impact and sustainability, as well.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began at your company or organization?

When I took over Harmless Harvest, I was surprised to learn that we only extracted the coconut water and were sending 40 million coconuts to the landfill — husk, coconut meat, and all. Not only is this not ‘Harmless’ per se, but for a company that is losing money, you’d think we would have gotten further with using (and monetizing) the entire coconut. I’m happy to report that we’ll scoop ~60% of our coconuts this year and upwards of 90+% next year. And, we believe we will have a use for all husks within the next year!

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Really spicy Thai food burns twice. Still haven’t learned my lesson.

How do you define “Leadership”? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?

Leadership in my profession is about having the conviction and responsibility to make the right decisions, not those that are easiest and most expedient. It’s about being authentic and doing my part to make the world a better place. It’s important to recognize that everyone plays a role — it can be as big as leading a progressive, mission-based company or as simple as finding more ways to reduce, reuse, and recycle more in your role. No feat is too big or too small if it all ladders up to using your skills and influence to make some sort of positive impact.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Don’t let perfection be the impediment to progress” — Personally, I feel we as a community often spend too much time defining, debating, and aligning to the ideal state…and then get paralyzed in our search for that first great step towards our future state. Instead, we should quickly identify our goal and begin driving actions towards that goal — even if those actions are incremental in nature. We’ve taken that approach at HH. A good example is our transition to 100% post-consumer recycled materials in all our beverages. While we were working to overcome the technical and sourcing challenges of moving to 100% rPET, we immediately moved to 30% rPET even though many argued it was not significant and noteworthy for consumers.

What exactly are we talking about when we refer to food waste?

“Food waste” refers to discarded foods that are either over-produced, sold in surplus or are unusable or inedible. Anything that is not used in producing a certain food item — such as peels, shells, pits, etc. — is also considered food waste. A large contributor to our food waste problem is only using one part of a food stock to produce a certain food or beverage item and discarding other parts of the same food that actually are edible or useable (for example, pulling the water from a coconut and discarding the valuable meat). If it ends up in a landfill and eats up our valuable resources like water, land, fertilizer, etc. it’s food waste.

Can you help articulate a few of the main causes of food waste?

One of the most prominent causes of food waste is spoilage, which can occur at many stages along the supply chain and production process. Other issues include overbuying by retailers, overproduction, and climate issues that cause crops to deteriorate prematurely. Ironically, food waste contributes greatly to climate change…and climate change can then cause more food to be wasted. It’s an unfortunate cycle.

What are a few of the obstacles that companies and organizations face when it comes to distributing extra or excess food? What can be done to overcome those barriers?

Sharp changes in consumer demand, seasonality, and shortage of labor can all contribute to over-ordering and/or food damage which eventually leads to waste. There are technologies that allow for precise tracking of food which can allow companies to better plan and adjust strategies accordingly. Additionally, food and beverage companies can adopt vertical integration — or sourcing all of their needs internally — as a potential shift to their business, if possible.

Can you describe a few of the ways that you or your organization are helping to reduce food waste?

True to our name, Harmless Harvest has always been highly committed to making great products while doing minimal harm. We’ve always operated with an ecosystem-based approach, considering the impact of our process and products from seed to shelf. In 2020, we took the pandemic slow-down as an opportunity to meticulously evaluate our practices and processes to ensure we were delivering on our mission and tracking toward our ultimate objective of achieving net positive impact and reducing our carbon footprint. We partnered with South Pole and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to conduct a GHG analysis of our sourcing, manufacturing, and distribution. We found that the most significant source of our emissions came from our agricultural practices, including coconut waste sent to landfills. This supported the need for our zero waste goal and reinforced our innovation strategy to develop products that use more of the whole coconut — such as our dairy-free yogurt alternative, smoothies that use coconut meat, coconut water with pulp, and dairy-free puddings and panna cottas. What’s more, we began selling our excess raw materials to other companies — even competitors — in order to achieve our zero waste goal.

To address our number-one customer complaint of plastic packaging, we transitioned to 100% recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) bottles for all of our coconut water and smoothie beverage products. This transition is part of our commitment to aggressively work toward 100% post-consumer recycled (PCR), recyclable, reusable, or compostable packaging for all of our products by 2025.

Additionally, we have been actively running our Regenerative Coconuts Agriculture Project (ReCAP) since December 2020. ReCAP is developing a regenerative farming model for the entire coconut industry in Thailand — something that doesn’t exist — and provides farmers with training on improving soil health, biodiversity, intercropping methods, and more to successfully transition to regenerative agriculture. Our goals are to see a 10% increase in local farmer income and to source 50% of all coconuts from regenerative farms by the end of 2023. We’re well on our way!

Are there three things the community/society/politicians can do to help address the root of this problem?

On the local level, communities can advocate for composting initiatives within their neighborhoods to utilize discarded food to nourish the soil for planting purposes, essentially creating a closed-loop cycle. On a micro level, individuals can compost their own discarded food, freeze produce and meat before its expiration date to ensure freshness upon thawing, and plan out meals to avoid overbuying of highly perishable food items. On a macro level, politicians and leaders can advocate for and support food banks and programs that actively donate food to those in need to close the gap between food waste and food insecurity, both major global problems.

What are your “5 things I wish someone told me when I first started” and why. Please share a story or example for each.

• The coconut business is NOT easy: Whether it be the worst drought in 40+ years, a pandemic, or a shipping crisis (not to mention all the run-of-the-mill challenges every small business faces), this business is anything but easy.
• Coconut supply is critical: When you single-source the best coconut out of one small geography in Thailand, successfully overcoming competitive demand, drought-induced lower supply, COVID, etc. is critical to the long-term business.
• Begin working with local/national organizations early to expand supply: The Nam Hom coconut market is growing quickly, but it still lacks any significant support or representation within government bodies.
• Understand the diamond-cut coconut market early: China is a major exporter of these coconuts and can be very disruptive as they enter/exit the market.

Are there other leaders or organizations who have done good work to address food waste? Can you tell us what they have done? What specifically impresses you about their work? Perhaps we can reach out to them to include them in this series.

There are so many organizations out there that are addressing this issue, but one that’s been on my radar recently is the UK-based The Felix Project. I’ve been impressed by their work in redistributing food in surplus from restaurants, grocers, retailers and sending it to schools and non-profits to serve food insecure communities. Their work is more important than ever and is a step in the right direction to alleviate both food waste and food insecurity, which has undoubtedly been compounded by the particularly tumultuous landscape overseas right now.

You are a person of enormous influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Waste not Wednesdays: Establish and promote Wednesdays (like Taco Tuesday and Meatless Monday) as a day to use up the items in your fridge. Establish online recipe resources and tools (mobile/web). People enter the items that they have on hand and the website/app tool provides breakfast, lunch, and dinner ideas based on the leftovers/old ingredients they have on hand.

Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)

The key architect of the US Farm Bill — we need to make significant changes to our food system and begin getting far more money behind regenerative organic, greater diversity in crops, agtech, etc.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Our annual mission report can be downloaded here for more information and details about our sustainability efforts. Additionally, you can check out what we’re up to at HarmlessHarvest.com and @harmlessharvest.

This was very meaningful, thank you so much, and we wish you only continued success.