I’ve been worried about climate change since I was about eight years old. And while my generation is supposed to care the most about this crisis, I’m continually surprised when contemporaries tell me ‘it's someone else’s problem’, ‘it's the fault of corporations’, or ‘one person can’t have any measurable impact.’ ☮️ But in addition to growing up a childhood hippie, I was also raised by small business owners who drilled the basic principles of running a business into my siblings and me as we sat around our kitchen table each month stamping, sealing and sending off invoices to their customers. 🌡️ In any case, since learning about that vital 1.5° warming threshold I’ve spent time working on both food and animal farms; eating vegetarian and most-of-the-time vegan; experimenting with a plastic-free, minimal-waste lifestyle; and preaching to family and friends about the detriments of food waste while getting into at-home composting myself. In short, I’ve gone much further down the rabbit hole. But when I joined BevNET and Nosh in 2021, I quickly recognized climate-crusading, mission-driven entrepreneurs understand this frustration well, and across all age groups. They’ve addressed that lack of collective responsibility with products designed to ease consumers’ moral dilemma. 🧑🌾 In this time, we’ve seen the increased adoption of regenerative agricultural practices, spanning from farm level implementation up through funding. Brands are also spearheading these efforts and creating products and new markets for these ingredients. 🔄 At the same time, the upcycled food movement continues to gain momentum as companies work toward mitigating the 42 coal-fired power plants (or 170 million metric tons)-worth of greenhouse gas emissions that thrown-out food in landfills contributes every year. ♻️ All the while, plenty of others are adopting packaging materials that don’t take up to 500 years to decompose (and when they do break down, don't infiltrate our food systems, water sources and in turn, our bodies with little micro bits). And lastly, there simply is not enough space here to address the strides plant-based producers have made during this time, despite criticisms of the category. While it's early days for most of these novel ideas and the early stage brands supporting them, many already claim ‘plant-based is dead,’ ‘regenerative agriculture isn’t sustainable at scale,’ ‘consumers don’t want to eat waste stream-derived foods’ and so on. As an “old Gen Z,” (a group that is also said to be the most pessimistic about the future), I am now concerned about those looking at just the negatives and trying to count out climate-positive efforts too soon. For all of you old folks out there, remember what they said after the dot com crash? Maybe don’t make the call just yet. Adrianne DeLuca (adeluca@bevnet.com) is a reporter for BevNET and Nosh. | 
