Innovating around spent grain — Circular Entrepreneurship Prototype

Welcome to Learning out Loud! This is where CFIL collaborators reflect on what we’ve been learning and trying in this experimental space. Thanks for joining us on our journey, and if you have any thoughts on what you’re reading we’d be happy to hear from you!

Figure 1. Circular Entrepreneurship Prototype feedback loop

The Circular Entrepreneurship prototype emerged from the recognition of the need to support connection between Vancouver businesses practicing circular economic models, so that they can work together and share their knowledge and necessities, as well as support and incentives so that those who are doing it, continue doing it, and so those who aren’t, join in.

Pinpointing our focus

With our participants’ excitement around this topic,

Figure 2. Participants feedback on the prototype proposal

based on the businesses who decided to participate in this prototype, and with the question: Where are the opportunities for incubating new business or product lines from where waste currently exists?, in mind; the Circular Entrepreneurship prototype decided to focus on spent grain.

Spent grain is the extracted residue from beer production, and an inevitable by-product of the brewing industry. Despite being rich in fibres and nutritional value, the attention and exploration around its opportunities are still minimal. Most spent grain either goes to organic disposal or becomes animal feed; and in the majority of the time, breweries have to pay to dispose of it. So, how might we keep spent grain within the food system and find new, innovative and exciting uses for it?

Broadening our scope

To get started, our team decided to reach out and connect with entrepreneurs and innovators outside of the CFIL project who are involved in the spent grain industry, to chat, share, and learn together.

The meeting was a success and hosted a lot of great conversations surrounding people’s perspectives on challenges, opportunities, gaps, and how they can support one another. Unfortunately, the meeting seemed to have been a one-time-thing and didn’t lead to any following conversations/relationship building. When people are already so busy with their own schedules and responsibilities it is a challenge to create or maintain momentum, especially when it revolves around a volunteer project which people are joining from their pure passion and will for change. A spinoff question related to this is, how might we incentivize and support people to build relationships, partnerships and support networks, so that entrepreneurs can spend their time solving problems through deep systems work while creating a livelihood, as opposed to this work being seen as an added ‘side-of-desk’ responsibility?

Despite only gathering with entrepreneurs and innovators once, the meeting led us — the CFIL team — to start brainstorming around ideas in how we could “equip” and re-design processes/operations in breweries to help facilitate the upcycling of spent grain (i.e.: dewatering stations in-house). Although many ideas were promising, it was challenging to break them down into smaller quickly testable prototypes, or they weren’t sparking stars in the eyes of our participants.

Taking a step back ; following yes’s!

The design process is a windy and swirly little line, definitely not a straight line, and more like a knot which we collectively untangle. By reframing from the assumption that we need to be testing a tangible solution right now, to the possibility that maybe we should be putting our collective energies into building a foundation and building relationships instead, we were able to take a step back and re-visit our intentions with this prototype.

The participants were also very excited about the idea of creating — in their words — “a business case” for spent grain; and in the spirit of following yes’s — which is always a great way to move through the world, especially when we are a little uncertain of where to move to, — we spent some time with that idea. With both of these frameworks — taking a step back and following yes’s — and by being able to be flexible, adjust, shift, morph, bend, and recognize open doors, we were able to find a couple promising entryways for this prototype and moreover for the brewing industry and cities trying to reach more sustainable and circular models.

Our reframed approach would be guided by the following principles:

• Let’s better understand the space we are entering.
• Let’s connect with people who are a part of this space and who are interested in becoming a part of it.
• Let’s share our struggles, challenges and victories and listen to others’ struggles, challenges and victories.

Portal #1: Understanding the spent grain challenge from Vancouver brewers

To get started on this new direction, we sent out a survey to 26 breweries in Vancouver to learn about their relationship and challenges around spent grain disposal and their interest in upcycling spent grain + changing the common processes to more sustainable and circular ones.

Figure 3. Survey sent out to Vancouver breweries

Portal #2: Growing Mushrooms from Spent Grain

At the same time the surveys were happening, we also started working on another direction for repurposing spent grain: mushroom growth.

A friend of mine — Darren Bennett — has been developing products with mycelium composites — mycelium is the vegetative root-like structure of mushrooms, that when combined with a substrate (usually an agricultural crop grain), forms a low-energy fabrication, light and insulative material known as mycelium composite.

Together, we started testing if spent grain would be a good match for growing mycelium — and therefore mushroom — with. The idea being that instead of using grain which is still good for human consumption to grow the mushrooms in, we would be using grain which otherwise would be going to disposal.

Figure 4. Mycelium growing on spent grain. Photo by Darren Bennett

Celebrating! + moving forward

Right now we are currently testing different mixtures of mycelium + spent grain composites to figure out the most successful one for mushroom growth. And we have just grown our first successful mushroom! This research will continue to unfold in the months to come and will potentially lead the way to a new circular industry, connecting breweries, designers and food businesses.

In regards to the survey, we received amazing engagement from the breweries and are so excited to move into the future with this project. Being able to reassess our decisions and by following the excitement we were taken to an opportune place we hadn’t thought of before. The process of navigating uncertain and new scenarios + systemic and convoluted issues can be frustrating and gloomy at times, but it is through these windy and swirly paths that we can make our new imaginable futures slowly flourish and emerge.

With the Circular Entrepreneurship prototype we are currently compiling all the new knowledge we gained from the surveys to move into the new phase of the project: focus group sessions to continue moving forward with the redesign of the brewing industry and spent grain after-life. If you would like to stay involved in this conversation, please reach out!

Disclaimer: the opinions and perspectives expressed within each of these posts are solely the author’s and do not reflect the opinions and perspectives of all CFIL participants.