Our hope is to make indoor farming more sustainable, accessible, and repeatable so that it can be a resource for communities across the country. Where fresh, delicious, local greens are good for you and the place you call home.
The indoor farming industry is very much new and growing, and we’re excited to be leading the way in the Pacific Northwest—an area so perfectly beautiful that it deserves every effort of protection.
Ken Kaneko founded Forward Greens in 2018 with co-founder – and best friend from high school – Will Tabajonda. It was on a business trip to Japan that Ken was first introduced to vertical farming. Intrigued by the idea, they combined their engineering backgrounds to make indoor farming more about the food and growing it sustainably.
Flash forward to the outcome – a place where the people are not only passionate about the environment but also open to trying new things and championing new ideas around foods and how they’re made!
We’re committed to growing greens year-round for our local communities and hope to play a role in moving the industry forward!
Our sustainability efforts include all of the ways we’re reducing our environmental impact. For us, this means we use 95% less water and 97% less land as compared to traditional outdoor farming. We grow without GMO, which is often used to boost crops, reduce disease, and keep things like pests and weeds away. Our indoor farm doesn’t require any genetic modifications to the plants because we’re indoors.
We have minimal harvest loss and much less food waste (30% of our country’s food waste happens between harvest and retail) and reduced emissions with greens traveling only 1-250 miles locally. And finally, we proudly partner with Ridwell for packaging recycling.
No need! Because our greens are grown clean with zero pesticides, herbicides or fungicides, they’re ready to eat.
We are continuing to improve every aspect of our process, and packaging solutions is at the top of that list. We’re proud to partner with Ridwell – an at-home recycling service – to provide Forward Greens customers a 10% sign-up discount! Our tray and film packaging can be collected by Ridwell as separate items (plastic film and plastic tray).
We developed our style of packaging because it uses up to 50% less plastic by weight in comparison to standard clamshells. We strive to deliver the freshest, tastiest greens to our consumers. In order to do that, we need to make sure our greens are safely protected during transport and get to you in the best shape possible while preserving their freshness.
At your local market! To reduce our environmental footprint, our greens only travel 1-250 miles and are offered locally in SW Washington, NW Oregon and Seattle, all from our Vancouver-based indoor farm. Find a location near you!
A vertical farm is form of an indoor farm. What it means is that instead of out and outdoors, we grow up and indoors. We‘re able to grow a field’s-worth of greens while saving valuable space in our urban environment and preserving natural habitats.
We never use bad chemicals which eliminates the need for any genetic alterations to plants.AKA our greens are just simple (and delicious!).
While we’re absolutely zero pesticide, herbicide, and fungicide, Forward Greens is not certified organic. Organic is often confused with those things we leave out, but an organic certification has to do with caring for the soil, which can actually include using a synthetic or organic pesticide!
We grow baby greens and microgreens. Forward Greens blends and mixes use a special variety of microgreens and baby greens not commonly found in stores because we aim to please with more unique textures and flavors than standard blends.
Our indoor farm is located in Vancouver, Washington, just across the bridge from Portland, Oregon. We hope to open more local farms in the near future so that we can bring farm-fresh goodness to more communities.