Circular Economy: HelloFresh Working to Decarbonize by Converting Food Waste into Products
Denali, a full-service recycler of organics, and HelloFresh, a meal kit provider, have completed repurposing nearly 4 million pounds of food waste in Phoenix to transform food waste into valuable products like compost and animal feed as well as help combat climate change by diverting food waste from landfills.
This food waste diversion program, started in 2023, focused on recycling pre-consumer food waste from HelloFresh’s facilities in Goodyear and Phoenix, Arizona.
Innovative Waste Recycling (IWR), a national waste management company specializing in sustainable solutions, provided logistics, while Denali’s depackaging machines cleanly separates the food waste from trash. Denali transforms the food waste into compost nourishing farms and gardens in the region and animal feed offering local farmers a more sustainable feed option.
Denali, HelloFresh, and Innovative Waste Recycling will divert 4 million pounds of food waste from Phoenix landfills by the end of 2024, equivalent to preventing an estimated 1,307 tons of CO2 greenhouse gasses from entering the atmosphere, which is comparable to the emissions from driving more than 1.5 million miles in an average gasoline-powered vehicle.
The methane emitted from landfill gases is considered multiple times more harmful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, according to many environmental scientists.
Denali’s advanced machinery mechanically separates cardboard, plastic, and other packaging from food. These ingredients cannot be placed in HelloFresh meal kits due to quality issues, typically food scraps resulting from produce, dairy products, and bread, as well as other ingredients near to expiry.
Denali mixes the resulting clean stream of organics with green waste such as lawn clippings and tree limbs, to create more than 20,000 tons of nutrient-rich compost in Phoenix each year, which is enough to fill one million one-cubic-foot retail bags of soil.
