Feeding it onward: Our commitment to waste reduction

When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) launched its Feed It Onward initiative to shine a light on food waste reduction, it felt like a natural fit to our core business at Darling Ingredients.

The EPA’s initiative celebrates ingenuity and generosity by highlighting companies that give food by-products a second life as essential resources. At Darling Ingredients, that isn’t just a timely campaign. It is the exact mission we’ve focused on since day one, particularly through our work at Bakery Feeds.

Circularity in action: Our Bakery Feeds process

In the commercial bakery and snack food sectors, managing residuals like off-specification products and excess dough is an operational reality. Sending these nutrient-rich ingredients to a landfill represents a massive loss to the U.S. food system and contributes to environmental strain.

Through our bio-upcycling process, Bakery Feeds intercepts these leftovers and converts them into valuable ingredients for animal feed. It’s true circularity in action: we lower emissions, reduce food waste, ease the landfill burden and improve overall supply chain sustainability. 

The challenge: Reducing industrial food waste

According to the EPA, more than one-third of all food in the United States goes uneaten. While those outside the industry might see food manufacturing residuals as a waste problem, we see them as an opportunity to maximize resources. We believe nothing is ever wasted. Every part of every living thing can be reused.

This is why our work aligns with the EPA’s food recovery hierarchy, which prioritizes recycling food scraps into sustainable livestock feed rather than landfilling or composting them. By transforming bakery and snack food by-products into sustainable animal feed, we keep valuable nutrients in the food cycle.

Leading the way to a greener future

Though we're excited to participate in the EPA's program, true sustainability is not a temporary campaign or a fleeting milestone; it is a continuous, generational effort. By looking at food manufacturing residuals through the lens of potential rather than waste, we can build systems that naturally replenish and sustain themselves. 

Alongside our partners across the animal agriculture and food production industries, Darling Ingredients remains dedicated to pioneering the circular solutions necessary to foster a more resilient, resourceful and waste-free world.