Marc Coloma On Tackling Environmental Issues Through Addressing Meat Consumption Habits

Marc Coloma is food activist and CEO of Heura. Born in Barcelona in 1991, Marc has been involved in social activism since he was just 16 years old.

In 2015 he decided to take part in an entrepreneurship program to create solutions to the problems in the current food system. His aim was, and is still to bring attractive solutions, and thus make livestock obsolete. In 2017, after extensive research, Heura was created and launched into the Spanish Market.

A second generation of plant based meat, proudly born in the Mediterranean. In 2018, Marc was awarded with the CVC Young Innovator Award and in 2019 he was recognised by Forbes as one of the ‘100 most creative people in business. In 2020 Marc has been recognised as the best entrepreneur of the year by the magazine Emprendedores and AIJEC. In 2021 Marc and Bernat were on the “100 other fortunes” of Forbes for their positive impact on the world.

Marc discusses the plant-based food movement that is addressing the negative environmental impacts of the meat industry, and how to constructively create long-lasting shifts in the ideologies of people.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Indio Myles] - To start off, could you please share a bit about your background and then what led to your work in social enterprise and impact?

[Marc Coloma] - I still have a continuity of motivations that I had since I was at teenager. The concept of justice is really important to me; I want to dedicate my life to creating a world where there is more pleasure, equality and justice, but less suffering.

I ended up in social entrepreneurship because of asking myself, "how can I have a more scalable impact?"

From there, I had the motivation to create Heura Foods. When I was 15 years old, I started in social activism and the student movement. While there, I met people that were already in university, were vegetarian and vegan and it made a lot of sense to me. I started to do activism as well in environment/animal rights, and I even dropped out of high school before finishing to dedicate all my time and energy to animal rights activism. When I was 18 years old, I was leading an international animal rights organisation in Catalonia (where I live in Spain), and we were doing a lot of consciousness, awareness and civil disobedience. I was living and conducting investigations and went into hundreds of farms and slaughterhouses to record and show to the world the ongoing situation. A lot of animals are living in farms, and that was a tipping point in my life because I realised that the whole food system was broken, not just for the animals and the planet, but also for our health and the people working in that system. We should find ways in order to make this system obsolete by producing plant-based proteins. That's what motivated me to go and start Heura, the fact that most of the people I talk to agree that we need a change but are lacking better options in the market. That's the motivation that sparked my beginning in social entrepreneurship.

As the founder of the plant-based food enterprise Heura Foods, can you please share a bit more about this organisation and the key lessons that you've learned on your entrepreneurial journey?

Alongside my other co-founder, we started Heura and decided that we are a purpose turned into a company. We have a clear mission about how to accelerate a protein transition, knowing the same way that we are going towards an energy or transport industry that will be cleaner. We need the same in the food industry.

People are not aware that the food industry is responsible for 35% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and livestock itself contributes more to the climate crisis than the whole transportation system, and that's because of the magnitude of the whole problem.

At Heura Foods, we want to accelerate a protein transition, and we do that through two ways. One is consciousness, we are good rebels. We are non-conforming, and we want to boost non-conforming people and empower them to change the world by giving them information, but also solutions in terms of products that will be successors to the current animal products available.

How do plant-based alternatives being offered in the market address issues such as greenhouse gas emissions or climate change?

They are one of the best levers in order to transform the way that we are thinking, producing and consuming animal products. In the end, there is a huge thing here to take into account. The human population is growing and so is the demand for animal products, but also, using animals as a means to get proteins or food products is the worst way possible for all stakeholders involved. One of the big challenges here is that we are consuming such a huge quantity that there are ten times more animals living in farms than humans living on the planet. It's interesting that when you look at mammals, only 4% are living in the wild. The rest are farm animals and humans. It's a model that doesn't make any sense. If you put $50 into a bank and when you withdraw your money you can only take one dollar out, you will think you are being robbed and it wouldn't make any sense. That's more or less what is happening every time we are feeding animals. For example, cows need fifty calories of food to produce one calory if we were looking at animals as machines. This inefficiency of resources creates huge problems.

In the end, animal agriculture is the leading cause of deforestation, biodiversity loss, groundwater contamination, and antibiotic resistance.

World health experts say it can be a problem for the future health crisis. Now, here where I live in Catalonia, there are more pigs living than humans and 68% of groundwater is contaminated. In the end, we have a problem here, the magnitude of the problem is so big and the model is so inefficient that what we have been doing is scaling a problem instead of looking at a better solution. It's interesting that when you look at bigger industries in the world, they are started with animals. With transportation, we used to use horses and then we moved to cars, and now we are moving towards electrifying those cars. We started using animals when we needed to light up cities before 300 years ago; we were using whale oil in order to do that before we discovered kerosene, and now we are using renewable energy in order to solve that.

When it goes to telecommunications, we started with pigeons, and then right now the way that we communicate is digitally. When it comes to protein, we scale up the problem, but we can go directly to the primary source and elements in nature to get meat products, and that's the amazing solution they represent. It's a better way to make sure that everyone can keep eating meat but do it in a way that takes into account or helps the planet and animals where everybody can win with an act of consumption.

How do you as an entrepreneur respond to opposition, behaviours and trends that are ingrained in society that are trying to push back against your idea to help people move towards a sustainable future?

Taking into account the last question, it's all about systems change. A piece of data I didn't mention that I think is relevant is that we are using more than 80% of agricultural land to feed animals, but we are only taking 18% of the calories from that. That is the reason why I decided to act through a company as a vehicle of change and through targeting consumption. We don't have to blame people, but we have to change the system and empower people to do that. In the end, when you go to a restaurant or supermarket and you don't have better options for consumption, you are asking a big effort of people. We dream of how to make problems obsolete by creating better offers and empowering people to know why that's important. For sure there are a lot of status quo forces like the current and incumbent meat industry that because of inertia create value chains that are totally outdated compared to the goals that we have this 21st century. But the way that we look at it is if we want to be a light and spark of hope towards the future, we need to create an example of how to develop value chains that take into account all stakeholders and place causes at the centre of the value proposition.

We need to place at the centre of the value proposition the environment, animals, health or social interest, and that's a part of transformation. If we scale that, the impact can be huge.

We dream about how we can create value chains that are climate positive, and that every consumer good is not just about causing minimum damage, but about being good, and this can be built.

Where do you believe there are opportunities for people who are social impact and business minded creating change and deliver positive outcomes on a global scale?

The problem is enormous. The challenge that we are facing this century with the climate crisis leaves a lot of big questions. How can we make sure we get sustainable energy to power ourselves? How are we able to feed the world in a way that doesn’t destroy the planet and other stakeholders? The problems are so bleak, therefore there are a lot of opportunities for taking action in the value chain that have to be built to solve those problems. I lean towards consumer goods, because these fuel things we are doing three to five times a day that are super entrenched in our habits. Therefore, the impact they have on the planet are astonishing. There are a lot of opportunities for creating better value change in consumer goods, and to deviate from this industrialisation perspective where we have only been thinking about satisfying and creating demand. But, we haven't thought much about how we should fulfil this demand and how value change has to be created in order to put in the centre of the value proposition everything that matters. That's where a lot of opportunities exist.

What inspiring project or initiatives have you seen recently in your work that are creating a positive social change?

Patagonia has always inspired me, but in the end, there is this main point that I'm repeating that normally in companies, there are the products or what they sell, and then the social responsibility activities. Companies that are integrating the value proposition, solution and everything that they talk about are the ones that inspire me. In Barcelona for example, there is a company called 011h creating climate positive buildings. They are changing the whole value chain to find the right materials and processes to make sure that each building contributes to a better planet. Companies that are thinking in these terms and challenging this method of thinking about creating value are super inspiring to me.

What books or resources would you recommend for our listeners?

There's a book I normally recommend called Man's Search For Meaning by Victor Frankel. At the end of this book there is this big idea of the power of purpose. When you have a big why, you can almost endure anyhow, and I think that's powerful in a world where we sometimes feel isolated and little towards big problems. This book made me feel empowered to gather with more people and act on dreams. I think that it's one of the most important ideas to push. That's the big idea behind Heura, nonconforming and understanding that if we act on something we dream, we can make a change.