By Eric Jenks, Special to NEAFA
For May, NEAFA is focusing on Brightfeeds, a company with an interesting take on foodwaste and animal feed opportunities. “I’ve been with Brightfeeds for a little over 3 years,” said Laxmi Stebbins Wordham, the Chief Growth Officer of Brightfeeds. “We’re still in startup mode, so I wear multiple hats at the company. I originally joined Brightfeeds to focus on growth strategy, which means marketing, business development, and working with customers on both the food and feed sides. When you look at food waste, there’s over 100 million tons of food wasted throughout the supply chain. Most of it, about seventy-five percent of that food waste ends up in landfills. At a landfill it’s going to rot, creating methane and other greenhouse gases. Food waste contributes to 8-10% of GHG globally. Brightfeeds saw an opportunity to take that food waste and turn it into something good for both the environment and our clients. We have a food waste to animal feed processing center in Connecticut. Feeding animals from food waste has a lot of challenges. You need to figure out how to get consistency in nutrients from a source that has a lot of variety. We have sensors for nutrient composition at our facility, which means we’re able to take in food waste streams and produce a consistent and nutritionally beneficial feedstock.”
While based in Connecticut, Brightfeeds serves throughout New England and NY. “We have a transfer station in Massachusetts as well,” said Wordham. “Our food mostly comes from the New England area, and we sell to farms throughout New England and New York. The reason why I joined Brightfeeds in the first place is that it intrigued me from a sustainability viewpoint. I have an engineering degree from Princeton, and I minored in environmental studies. I received my MBA from Harvard. I didn’t have an ag background before Brightfeeds. I worked as a geological engineer for Shell, and then went into business in the tech space focused on wearable technology. When we sold that business in 2020, I thought about what I wanted to do next. I wanted to do something in sustainability, and that’s when I met the cofounders of Brightfeeds, Jonathan Fife and Tim Rassias. I loved what they were doing and that this was something beneficial for the environment and for farmers. Three years later, and here we are making a difference in the industry.”
The process for creating the feed from food waste isn’t a simple one. “It’s a lot more complex than I originally anticipated,” said Wordham. “The technical aspect is what were focused on originally; can we get it to do what we want it to do. When we found that we could, we then focused more on the business development of getting our product out to customers. There’s a lot of complexity to the logistics of getting stuff from point a to point b, and the regulatory environment for both feed and transportation can be challenging. We’re currently in the process of adding two additional facilities. While we do that, we want to make sure that we keep our customers happy, continue collecting food waste in a timely manner from our partner businesses, and make sure on the feed side that we produce quality product. It’s a complex business to navigate, but I’m glad we’re here. We had a booth at this year’s annual meeting with NEAFA, and several customers encouraged us to join. We’re part of this community, and we want to make sure that we have an opportunity to be more involved. We’re excited at the growth we’re currently seeing, at introducing sustainable feed options to more farms and feed mills. We’re excited about the future because our model works.”
For more information, please visit www.Brightfeeds.com