Meal kit company HelloFresh has repurposed nearly four million pounds of food waste into new food-based products like compost and animal feed. This equates to preventing approximately 1,307 tons of CO2 greenhouse gasses from entering the atmosphere, a major milestone achieved from a growing partnership with Denali, a full-service recycler of organics, that started in 2023.
The food waste diversion program focuses on recycling pre-consumer food waste from HelloFresh’s facilities in Goodyear and Phoenix, Ariz., so they don’t end up in landfills. The process is facilitated by logistics powered by Innovative Waste Recycling (IWR), a national waste management company that specializes in sustainable solutions. Denali’s depackaging machines cleanly separate the food waste from trash, then transform the food waste into compost to nourish regional farms and gardens in the Phoenix area and offer compost for sale in the area. Animal feed is also offered to local farmers.
“At HelloFresh, we are on a mission to create a more sustainable food system,” said Jeff Yorzyk, Senior Director of Sustainability at HelloFresh North America in a statement. “Denali enables us to repurpose inedible food and instead use it to feed animals and produce compost for gardens and other agricultural needs throughout Arizona. We are committed to further reducing food waste at all our U.S. processing centers and are grateful for partners like IWR and Denali who help us achieve these sustainable practices.”
Denali’s machinery eliminates the labor-intensive manual work required to separate cardboard, plastic and other packaging from food that cannot be added to HelloFresh kits due to quality issues. For example, food scraps from produce, dairy products and bread, as well as products too close to their expiration dates, cannot be included in boxes. Denali then mixes the clean stream of organics with green waste, such as lawn clippings and tree limbs, to create compost.
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