Denali Joins the EPA’s Feed It Onward Initiative for Food Waste Recycling
As part of the nation's 250th-anniversary celebrations, Denali is participating in the EPA’s Feed It Onward initiative. This campaign focuses on raising awareness on the negative environmental impacts of wasted food and the need to donate food to communities wherever possible, while highlighting the benefits of creating renewable products. The initiative’s mission to maximize our food resources will continue well beyond this year.
Denali focuses on this mission every day. We work with businesses to collect unused, unconsumable food and other organic materials, recycling them into nutrient-rich animal feed, compost, and biofuels. You can learn more about this national effort on the official EPA Feed It Onward initiative page.
Completing the recovery cycle
The Feed It Onward initiative places a strong, necessary emphasis on food donations to support families and communities. However, when surplus food is expired, damaged, or simply cannot be donated, Denali steps in to ensure its value is not lost to a landfill.
Denali works with food businesses across industries, from restaurants to large grocers and food manufacturers, to provide the scalable, plug-and-play infrastructure needed to extend the value of their uneaten and non-donatable food.
From soil to supper: The power of natural animal feed, compost, and fertilizer
As a nation, each of us can have a tremendous impact. A healthy food supply starts with healthy soil and resilient farms, and repurposing organic materials is a highly practical solution to support our agricultural systems.
Through our nationwide network, we transform unsold food and green materials into nutrient-rich compost, natural fertilizers, and high-quality livestock feed. By returning these organic resources to the earth and our farms, we help growers produce healthier crops, reduce the need for synthetic fertilizers, significantly improve soil water retention, and offset the demand for traditional feed crops. It’s a true "soil to supper" cycle that makes better use of what we already have.
Check out this video to hear Denali's Laila Lakhani-Ali, EVP of Strategy & Strategy discuss our work with NASCAR with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin
Practical solutions and national partnerships
Solving food recovery challenges is a series of practical choices that become easier when better systems are in place. In 2024 alone, Denali customers helped divert 14 billion pounds of organic material from landfills.
We are proud to work alongside national partners like NASCAR and the Green Sports Alliance who are actively participating in Feed It Onward and other environmental initiatives.
Services and outcomes
By providing right-sized infrastructure, we make reuse easier for businesses of all sizes:
Our mechanical depackaging technology efficiently separates unconsumable food from its packaging. This makes it easy for grocery stores and food manufacturers to recycle at scale, saving hours of manual labor.
We convert bakery byproducts, dairy, and unconsumed products from food manufacturers into nutritious, high-quality livestock feed, offsetting the need for traditional feed crops.
We recycle unsold food and green materials into nutrient-rich compost, mulch, and soil amendments. By returning these organic resources to the earth, we improve soil health, support local agriculture, and reduce reliance on synthetic fertilizers.
We recover nutrient-rich food processing residuals (FPRs) from manufacturing facilities and provide them to farmers at no cost. This organic fertilizer builds long-term soil health, improves water retention, and releases nutrients gradually across the growing season.
We route organic residuals and used cooking oil to anaerobic digesters and biofuel facilities, creating clean-burning biofuels and renewable natural gas.
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