While the consumer goods and retail industry is heavily focused on recycling packaging materials, an equally important issue is recycling the food in that packaging when it is no longer saleable. According to the national nonprofit ReFEDIn the United States, approximately 77.6 million tons of food waste were generated in 2022, of which nearly 3.9% came from retail because products were damaged or expired and could no longer be sold. Of the food waste generated by retail, 51% ended up in landfills and 39.5% ended up in compost or anaerobic digestion.

While Walmart has long had a manual in-store system for removing expired, spoiled, damaged or recalled food from packaging – a process called “unpacking” – a new partnership with organic recycler Denali enables retailers to unpack groceries more efficiently, freeing up staff for other tasks and diverting more food waste to organic recycling.

“Manual processes are notoriously difficult to follow,” says RJ Zanes, Walmart’s vice president of facility services. “Ultimately, you have to train entry-level employees to unpack. It takes time and it’s not a clean job. Imagine unpacking ground beef and throwing the packaging in one area and the meat in another. You end up with people violating procedures and our diversion rate doesn’t reach the level we need.”

Before launching the new Zero De-Pack program, Walmart conducted a proof of concept in its Phoenix market. Denali Chief Revenue Officer Ilia Kostov tells us that Denali has been working with de-packing technologies in several key markets for years. In Phoenix, the company operates three de-packing and recycling facilities: one specializes in beverages in plastic, aluminum and other containers, as well as pre-processing of cooking oils; one handles dry, unsaleable foods such as snacks, bread, pasta, candy, flour and other products that are further processed into pet food; and one handles unsaleable food and food waste from grocery stores, cafeterias, stadiums, restaurants and more. The third facility accepts a wide range of materials, including meat, fish, fruits and vegetables, as well as packaging and contaminants associated with post-consumer waste such as plates and wrappers.

Denali shreds packaging and products wherever possible before processing them in its unpacking facilities.

Denali’s depackaging and recycling process works similarly to a municipal recycling facility. First, Denali picks up packaged food waste from participating establishments, which collect the waste and place it in organic waste bins. Garbage trucks then transport the material to either a transfer station or to a facility equipped with depackaging technology, where the material is dumped onto a dump floor. The packaged food is then pre-sorted as much as possible to aggregate similar materials. After sorting, tractors pick up the waste and feed it to the appropriate depackaging facility. At the facility, the materials are processed using grinders, blowers and separators, with the organic waste coming out in a hopper on one side and the packaging coming out the other.

According to Kostov, the plant can process between 15 and 30 tons of material per hour per line and separate up to 97% of all waste from organic food waste. The resulting organic material stream is then further processed into animal feed, compost or renewable energy. Where possible, the packaging is recycled. “For example, we would aggregate beverage material into aluminum cans and run those through the process, aggregating and recycling the aluminum,” Kostov explains.

As with any pilot project, Zanes says, there were several lessons learned for Walmart and Denali. For the organic waste recycler, the POC testing provided insights into how the technology needs to evolve over time. For Walmart, one of the key lessons was the need to close the infrastructure gap. “We had to figure out how to get higher density with various other partners to make the infrastructure more and more efficient,” Zanes says.

“There were also some minor improvements in terms of how we provision the fresh produce and the placement of the organics recycling bins to make it easier for our employees and Denali, as well as determining the appropriate collection cycles,” he adds. “So all of these little processes had to be worked out to streamline the program and make sure we were achieving the labor efficiencies and diversion rates that we intended.”

In late June 2024, Walmart rolled out Zero De-Pack in 1,400 of its Walmart and Sam’s Club stores in more than 16 U.S. markets nationwide, with plans to expand. Based on testing, the new process is expected to increase the volume of potentially reusable organic content by more than 60% and reduce Walmart’s trash compactor by an estimated 12%. While Zanes could not provide an exact number for the amount of waste diverted, he said “it’s a significant amount of food.”

Kosov was more forthcoming. He said: “Thanks to this innovation, we expect to be able to recycle about 90,000 kilograms of food waste from each store that uses our unpacking service.”

Regarding Walmart’s desire to spread the word about its work with Denali, Zanes says, “I think the more we can get the word out, the more important it is to me to show the world the opportunity to continue to use different technologies and recycling pathways so that we can close the loop and keep things out of the landfill by repurposing them.”

“It’s not just about reducing methane emissions, it’s about doing the right thing. And the more people we get on board, the more efficient we become as a society at recycling, the more efficient the recycling process becomes by building density. And ultimately, we can reuse these assets that people have grown or raised and make sure that they’re not wasted and that the life that we’re consuming is not wasted and can be reused. And that’s the beauty of it for me, and I think for Walmart as well.

“We want to make sure others know about this. The purpose of our announcement is to make sure others can join in and help change the dynamic. We all know that the United States has struggled to achieve consistency in recycling in the end, and frankly, that’s because of the complexity within recycling. We need to simplify the processes, and the more we can simplify the processes and use technology for accuracy, the better off we’ll all be as a society.” PW