Selected as one of TIME magazine's Best Inventions of 2021
Outstanding results grounded in a NASA engineer and a powerful brand slogan (Fight Food Waste)
Today we introduce an agri-tech* brand that has achieved enormous results over the past two years on the strength of its founder's story and idea and a powerful slogan. It is a company called "SAVRpak," selected by "TIME magazine" as one of the Best Inventions of 2021.
*Agri-tech is a compound of Agriculture and Tech, referring to businesses bringing innovation to the agricultural field with the help of advanced technology.
"SAVRpak" was invented by Bill Birgen, an engineer at the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), to solve the problem of food going soggy because of moisture. In a 2021 interview with the agriculture magazine "agrigate global," Bill Birgen described SAVRpak as "rocket science for food."
He said, "I wanted to find a way to keep the lunch I packed at home from going soggy," and revealed that while designing temperature, humidity, and anti-icing solutions for spacecraft, he began developing a solution to the condensation problem—an enemy of fresh food that he himself had discovered. In the end, he developed a small patch that solves this problem by drawing moisture from the air inside a container before that moisture condenses on the food's surface.
[SAVRpak ©SAVRpak]
The Origin Story of a Fresh-Food Hero Powered by Spacecraft Technology
SAVRpak determined that the enemy of fresh food is condensation. Greg Maselli, SAVRpak's co-founder and CEO, flatly stated that "nothing gets tastier the moment it touches water." He captured the point that the reason food goes soggy is the water vapor trapped in the container along with the hot food. Hot food keeps releasing moisture even after cooking, and water vapor builds up when the food is packaged, which is why we receive soggy delivered food. Eliminating condensation—that is the essence of the problem.
[The difference after about 30 minutes between a product that used SAVRpak and one that did not ©SAVRpak]
To eliminate condensation, SAVRpak was designed to absorb the moisture inside a food container. For example, when delivering french fries, if a SAVRpak is inside the container, it absorbs the moisture in the air so that the crispy surface of the fried food can be maintained. Through the research team's experiments, it was also found that SAVRpak can lower the humidity inside a food container by up to 45% and extend the shelf life of packaged food by up to two weeks. Extending by up to two weeks even the time it takes for food to turn into waste—it is truly nothing short of an innovative invention.
The Oldest, Most Futuristic Industry: 'Agriculture'
Kim Yu-ho, head of the Agriculture Division at the National Agriculture Museum, said that "the oldest industry, yet the most futuristic, is agriculture." The problems agriculture currently has—#food-security #food-shortage #climate-change #declining-farming-population #biodiversity #food-safety—are issues directly linked to human survival. Everyone would agree that it is an important industry, but it has also been an industry in which clear innovation has been difficult, bound up as it is with countless interests and value chains ever since humanity first began cultivation. According to the U.S. market-research firm MarketsandMarkets, the market size of the agri-tech industry reached 7.5 billion dollars in 2018 and is projected to reach 13.5 billion dollars in 2023. An industry of great scale and attention also becomes the growth backdrop for companies and brands with new ideas.
[A banner for SAVRpak's food-waste solution campaign ©SAVRpak]
The Results Brought by an Innovative Shelf-Life Extension
Bill Birgen stated, "The food waste the whole world produces is an enormous problem amounting to 2.6 trillion dollars in scale. SAVRpak solves this problem by using compostable bags to extend the shelf life of produce by 50% to 100% without chemicals," expressing his hopes for the greenhouse-gas problem that would be reduced by cutting food waste and for the improvement in agricultural efficiency made possible by reducing waste.
A product whose shelf life has been innovatively extended will stay tasty for a long time, but the flavor of the story—a NASA-alumnus founder crying out to fight food waste and innovating the agri-food industry—is fresh, too. Spacecraft technology and food: an unfamiliar connection, but this company, which presents a new way of looking at a problem and has created an answer that can be used quickly, cheaply, and simply, has a future worth anticipating. SAVRpak has not yet come to Korea. So, for tonight, how about holding off on delivery food just once? Let us, too, quietly join SAVRpak's campaign to solve food waste.
by Editor L