OUR STORY

Hi! I’m Claire.

I’ve always been passionate about two things: food and the environment. Growing up, I was really inspired by Julia Child, and I created my own cooking shows in the family kitchen. When I wasn’t whipping up a dessert on ‘Claire Cooks,’ I was running around outside in the redwoods or playing at the beach.

As I grew older, I began to understand how these two favorite things of mine - food and nature - are inextricably linked. I first came face-to-face with the issue of food waste when I co-founded Boston’s first organic juice company. At the end of each day, we were left with a mountain of nutritious produce pulp. We knew that throwing away this pulp was a waste of the resources used to grow the fruits and vegetables, but we just didn’t have a solution.

Motivated by this problem, I set out to find sustainable food waste solutions. When I learned about okara, the byproduct of soymilk production, that’s when the lightbulb went off. What if we could use this byproduct to both reduce food waste and provide affordable nutrition?

I founded Renewal Mill as the next generation ingredients company that upcycles byproducts, like okara, into high quality ingredients and keeps valuable nutrition in the supply chain. But, okara is just the beginning. There’s a world full of other byproducts, equal or greater in volume and nutrition, just waiting for their day in the sun.

Personally, starting Renewal Mill brought me back full circle to my two original loves: delicious food and our beautiful planet.