NEW YORK – The winners of Fast Company’s 2021 World Changing Ideas Awards were announced today, honoring the businesses, policies, projects, and concepts that are actively engaged and deeply committed to pursuing innovation when it comes to solving health and climate crises, social injustice, or economic inequality.
Spero Foods, Honorable Mention in On The Rise category, is creating the world’s first mainstream dairy alternatives– affordable to everyone, available everywhere, healthy, and absolutely delicious. Spero makes dairy from seeds, which are 7-8x less expensive and grow 50-70x faster than nuts. By using truly scalable ingredients and cutting-edge technology, Spero is the first company making plant-based dairy cheaper than traditional dairy products.
Now in its fifth year, the World Changing Ideas Awards spans with Health and Wellness, AI & Data among the most popular categories. A panel of eminent Fast Company editors and reporters selected winners and finalists from a pool of more than 4,000 entries across transportation, education, food, politics, technology, and more. Plus, several new categories were added, including Pandemic Response, Urban Design, and Architecture. The 2021 awards feature entries from across the globe, from Brazil to Denmark to Vietnam.
Showcasing some of the world’s most inventive entrepreneurs and companies tackling exigent global challenges, Fast Company’s Summer 2021 issue (on newsstands May 10) highlights, among others, a lifesaving bassinet; the world’s largest carbon sink, thanks to carbon-eating concrete; 3D-printed schools; an at-home COVID-19 testing kit; a mobile voting app; and the world’s cleanest milk.
“I kept thinking: there must be a way to invent better dairy– dairy everyone could access and enjoy. So I leveraged my backgrounds in science, engineering, and art to invent Spero and completely disrupt the dairy sector,” says Phaedra, Chief Executive Officer & Founder, also an award-winning artist.
“Our ethos? Make plant-based products that are delicious, accessible, affordable for all, and better for you and the planet. At Spero, we believe in making it easy, fun and tasty AF to live a plant-forward life.”
“There is no question our society and planet are facing deeply troubling times. So, it’s important to recognize organizations that are using their ingenuity, impact, design, scalability, and passion to solve these problems,” says Stephanie Mehta, editor-in-chief of Fast Company. “Our journalists, under the leadership of senior editor Morgan Clendaniel, have discovered some of the most groundbreaking projects that have launched since the start of 2020.”
About the World Changing Ideas Awards: World Changing Ideas is one of Fast Company’s major annual awards programs and is focused on social good, seeking to elevate finished products and brave concepts that make the world better. A panel of judges from across sectors choose winners, finalists, and honorable mentions based on feasibility and the potential for impact. With the goals of awarding ingenuity and fostering innovation, Fast Company draws attention to ideas with great potential and helps them expand their reach to inspire more people to start working on solving the problems that affect us all.
About Spero Foods:
Spero is a plant-based food tech company building the world’s largest plant-based dairy enterprise. Spero employs pending patented technology to transform low-cost, sustainable and scalable ingredients into plant-based dairy. They’re the first company who can outcompete dairy: mass-scale, price parity, better taste, addressing the $124B dairy market in the U.S. Spero has been recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30 – Food and Drink, IAB 2020: Most Disruptive Brands in the U.S., Hermes Creative Awards 2x Gold Winner, and Mashed feature with Lizzo.
