Boston-based Impact Snacks is creating vegan superfood bars and snacks with sustainable packaging and a carbon-neutral supply chain.
A couple of weeks ago, Nick Oliveri, co-founder and COO of Impact Snacks, posted a video on TikTok where he ate his company’s superfood bar. It was mindblowing.
Why? He didn’t open the bar. He ate the whole thing, wrapper and all.
That’s what Impact Snacks is doing: building vegan snacks in sustainable, home-compostable (and edible) packaging, with a carbon-negative supply chain. When Oliveri and his partner Corey Nobile began a Kickstarter campaign for the business on August 26, they had set a goal of $20,000 (£15,500). They met it in 13 hours.
“We knew we had something special here, but that just goes to show that consumers are craving this from the companies they are supporting and purchasing from,” Nobile, the company’s CEO, tells The Vegan Review. “We’re not done yet,” he adds, as Impact Snacks continues to raise the funds until the end of September.
@impact.snacksYo big business- I bet you can’t eat your wrappers. 😤🤙🌱 ##plasticfree ##sustainablity ##foodies ##wrapperchallenge♬ Pieces (Solo Piano Version) – Danilo Stankovic
It was born out of the founders’ passion for nutrition and sustainability. Working together since high school, they Nobile and Oliveri started with a minimal ingredient, plant-based protein powder. “Along the way, we learned that the average American eats 4 snacks per day — that’s 1 billion snacks per day — and most of those snacks are individually packaged in harmful petroleum-based plastics,” notes Nobile.
He adds: “We realised we could change that and make a huge impact by giving people an easy snack option for the health of their bodies and the health of our planet.” And that’s where the 100% home-compostable, certified marine-biodegradable wrappers made entirely from plant-based bioplastics come in.
“It is a bio-cellulose material derived from soy, and even the ink is made out of veggies,” Nobile says. “It was a long process of testing, iterating and experimenting, but we finally made it happen and couldn’t be more excited to share it with other consumers and help other businesses do the same.”
He adds that everything the company produces is a net-positive for the environment: “The full supply chain is transparently tracked and audited by life-cycle assessment-compliant carbon accountants.” Impact Snacks has a partnership with carbon offsetting company Clearloop, determining that each bar produced 0.38 lbs of greenhouse gases. “We then grant customers 2.5-times that in carbon credits to invest in renewable energy projects or to plant trees via mass reforestation projects with every purchase they make,” explains Nobile.
The team behind Impact Snacks plans to launch additional flavours of bars and other snacks. In the longer term, it hopes to expand its sustainability practices to other goods. “Consumers want to make an impact and change in our environment,” says Nobile, “and we hope to be able to help them easily do that.”
*Disclaimer: The Vegan Review does not encourage any of our readers eat packaging of any kind. Â
