ReFED Announces $2M in Grants to Nine Organizations Tackling Methane Through Its Catalytic Grant Fund

New cohort advances composting infrastructure and climate-smart innovations across the beef and dairy sectors to reduce one of the world’s most potent greenhouse gases.

[Charlotte, North Carolina - May 20, 2026] - Today at the 2026 ReFED Food Waste Solutions Summit, ReFED announced the newest cohort of grantees selected through its Catalytic Grant Fund, a first-of-its-kind initiative designed to provide flexible, risk-tolerant capital to food waste solutions with the potential for outsized climate impact.

The latest open call, Minimizing Methane Through Food Waste Solutions, focused on supporting solutions that address methane emissions in two critical areas: advancing food recycling infrastructure to keep organic waste out of landfills and reducing methane emissions across beef and dairy supply chains through innovative feed and waste-to-value solutions.

Methane is responsible for roughly one-third of current global warming, and food waste is one of its largest and most overlooked drivers. In the United States, nearly 30% of food goes unsold or uneaten, making food waste the single largest material stream sent to landfills, where it generates an estimated 58% of landfill methane emissions. At the same time, methane from enteric fermentation and manure management represents one of the largest sources of agricultural emissions, particularly within the beef and dairy sectors. By investing in both food recycling infrastructure and innovations that reduce emissions across livestock supply chains, ReFED’s newest cohort is tackling methane at multiple points across the food system.

The organizations and projects receiving support are:

• Black Earth Compost has scaled across the Northeast by prioritizing affordable food scrap collection, decentralized compost facilities, contamination removal and customer trust. With ReFED's support, they will build a mobile, trash removal machine proven for food waste mixed with compostable packaging.

• Compost Research & Education Foundation (CREF) is modernizing the nation’s compost testing standards to strengthen compost quality, improve measurement methodologies, and help build greater trust and scalability across the composting industry.

• Fermeate converts whey byproducts from dairy production into valuable food-grade ingredients and proteins through fermentation, diverting high-organic-load waste streams away from wastewater systems where they can generate methane emissions.

• Gilly makes cattle feed ingredients that unlock nutritional value of agricultural byproducts like tomato pomace, grape pomace, and soybean hulls while reducing methane intensity.

• Golden State Foods is developing replication toolkits and industry-facing resources to help reduce beef waste across its operations and share learnings broadly with major industry groups including the Meat Institute and the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef.

• NewTerra Compost is proactively building infrastructure in “composting deserts” like Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama, markets with no regulatory pressure but clear operational need, demonstrating that viable service models can be established ahead of policy mandates.

• Organicycle is pioneering a partnership model with Waste Management to co-locate composting operations at existing waste sites, reducing permitting friction and accelerating infrastructure buildout in regions like Michigan and Northern Indiana.

• Rust Belt Riders (RBR) is building a future where food scraps become soil and workers become owners. Rust Belt Riders is a worker-owned cooperative that leads sustainable organic waste management in Northeast Ohio by partnering with food manufacturers, hospitals, schools, restaurants, municipalities, and residents. Food scraps composted by RBR are recycled into living soils that serve the community as Tilth Soil.

• University of Georgia (UGA) researchers are transforming surplus fruits, vegetables, and other agricultural byproducts into climate-smart cattle feed through a fermentation platform that produces medium-chain fatty acids shown to improve feed efficiency and reduce methane emissions from cattle.

“The food system is a major, often overlooked opportunity for methane reduction,” says Angel Veza, Director of Innovation Initiatives at ReFED. “What’s exciting about this cohort is that the grantees are not only reducing emissions, they’re redesigning waste streams into valuable inputs, strengthening domestic composting infrastructure, and helping build a more resource-efficient food system. This is the kind of systems-level innovation that can create measurable climate impact while reshaping how we think about waste altogether.”

“The Whiteman Family Foundation is proud to support the ReFED Catalytic Grant Fund’s Methane Open Call because we believe catalytic capital can help unlock innovative solutions to some of the most urgent climate challenges,” says Kaylyn Fern, Director of Strategic Philanthropy at The Whiteman Family Foundation. “Food waste is a major driver of methane emissions, yet many promising solutions struggle to access the early support needed to scale. We’re excited to help accelerate entrepreneurs and projects working directly on methane mitigation and advancing a more sustainable, resilient food system.”

Building upon its expertise in food waste innovation and capital deployment, ReFED created the Catalytic Grant Fund to help funders collectively support high-potential solutions through a pooled financing vehicle that provides patient and flexible capital. Since launching in 2022, the Fund’s portfolio of 21 grantees has gone on to secure more than $42.6 million in follow-on funding, a 13x multiplier effect that demonstrates how catalytic philanthropy can help unlock significantly larger waves of investment and accelerate the scale-up of climate solutions.