Matt Plitch, founder of sustainable dairy brand Neutral, envisions carbon neutral food and beverage as the next big food movement. As a “global food revolution” in line with the recent rise of veganism, he sees a future in which grocery stores will have a carbon neutral aisle and “neutralists” can shop for products with net-zero carbon emissions.
If that prediction is to prove true, Neutral, his first venture into the carbon-neutral CPG space, will need to find an audience. The brand launched last November across Seattle and Washington, offering half gallons of organic 2% and whole milk at a suggested retail price of $5.49. It is currently sold in select natural retailers and at local foodservice outlets and announced last week its launch with food waste-conscious grocery delivery service Imperfect Foods. Plitch said Neutral’s goal is to be available throughout the west coast by the end of the year and expand to the rest of the country throughout 2021.
The brand’s first goal has been introducing its products locally to a wide range of consumers unfamiliar with the concept of carbon footprints while also re-introducing milk to those who may have turned away from dairy for environmental reasons. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, cattle raised for milk and beef account for nearly 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, which in turn drives climate change.
Plitch first heard about consumers’ desires to reduce their carbon footprints while traveling for his job as a footwear director at Nike’s innovation group. Tasked with leading consumer insight, Plitch travelled extensively to connect with consumers in cities across the world, and found that people from Paris to Los Angeles to Tokyo all shared similar concerns about reducing their carbon footprints.
“Of the countless people around the world who want to change their carbon footprint, so many of them are feeling frustrated and left out and ignored,” Plitch said. “Because many of the solutions that existed came at a really high cost.”
Rather than launch a single-purchase item like a pair of sneakers, Plitch turned to food, a “low cost, high impact” product.
“Food is this incredibly singular, elegant solution to this market gap because it’s as daily and as necessary as it is deeply emotional and aspirational and a badge that people wear,” he said.
Through demos (now halted by COVID-19), Plitch said he’s been able to connect with consumers across demographics and bring in consumers like new mothers who had never fed their children dairy or consumers that had turned their back on dairy milk altogether.
“The reaction has just been the same for everyone, which is such a confirmation,” he said. “I think the most important piece around scalability is just how consumers are adopting this concept in their own minds.”
The brand has been built on three pillars, according to Plitch, the first of which was determining the brand’s carbon output. For this, the brand partnered with Dr. Greg Thoma, a professor at the University of Arkansas, to calculate its footprint through factors ranging from the farms’ fertilizers, methane from cows, trucks transporting the product, energy used by its co-packer and even the leakage from refrigerators at retailers.
The second pillar is making the product neutral by partnering with local farmers who turn cow manure into renewable energy through a process called anaerobic digestion, which harnesses the manure’s methane to run a power generator. Farmers can then use this to heat and power their farms, and can also sell any extra energy back to the grid for an additional revenue stream. Neutral is also working to accelerate the development of new offset methods, with its demand serving as the “catalyst that gets a project that may not have otherwise broken ground approved,” Plitch said.
The third pillar takes the process further; “It’s not enough to just understand the footprint and make it neutral,” Plitch said, “you also have to profoundly reduce it.” While Neutral products are slightly more expensive than traditional dairy brands, Plitch said this in part funds the introduction of new practices like planting cover crops and no-till farming along with measures to increase energy efficiency and nutrient and manure management.
Beyond dairy, Plitch said that as the brand scales it will continue to focus on food groups with the highest carbon emissions; up next is fresh produce.
“I don’t envision us ever producing a vanilla ginger kombucha,” he said. “We’d much rather be focused on these foundational food groups where we can let the food itself do the talking in terms of taste. That gives us a whole bunch of freedom and time to focus on things like practices to reduce the footprint on the farm.”
Neutral incubated with Portland-based design firm OMFGCO for six months to create a visual identity and with packaging using the back and sides of each carton to explain the basics of carbon neutrality. In communicating with and educating customers, Plitch said he’s found it important to quantify the carbon offset of products as people “realize their potential and what they can do in their own lives” in terms of sustainability. The brand’s website identifies its milks’ 12 or 13 pounds of carbon offset as equivalent to driving about 14 miles in a car.
Neutral is not the only dairy brand dedicated to carbon neutrality. In March, Horizon Organic announced its goal to be “carbon positive” by 2025, not only achieving net-zero emissions, but also eliminating more carbon than it produces. The brand aims to make its Growing Years milk its first carbon neutral product by 2021; according to Danone North America CEO Mariano Lazano, that will be achieved through “regenerative soil practices, cow feed and diet management programs, and energy efficiency.” Organic Valley is also working to achieve carbon neutrality at its regional California farms, in compliance with a California law requiring dairies to reduce methane emissions by 40% by 2030.
While sustainability sourced carbon neutral dairy milk could be seen as a competitor to nut and oat-based milks that have risen in popularity in recent years, given that they have a lower carbon footprint than dairy milk, Plitch doesn’t see it that way. He said he sees plant-based milks as a “compliment” to Neutral and wouldn’t rule out a Neutral plant-based line “in the near future.”
“This thing is going to be defined by not just us and we need as many people in this effort, in this endeavor, in this journey as possible,” Plitch said. “We have to build solutions that give everyone the opportunity to bring Neutral into their home and to be a part of this movement.”