Every year, the global livestock industry processes billions of animals to feed our growing world.
The big picture: Roughly 50% of each animal never makes it to the plate. Without rendering, which is a safe, scalable solution, the valuable, nutrient-dense material would go to waste, rapidly overwhelm our waste management systems and generate a significant volume of greenhouse gases.
What we do: Darling Ingredients steps in to reclaim this material, transforming it into valuable new products instead of letting it go to waste.
How rendering works: At its core, animal rendering is a highly controlled thermal process that converts discarded tissue into safe, clean and valuable ingredients that support everyday life.
- The "original recycling": We take the inedible parts and meat we don’t eat and transform it into nutritious ingredients for livestock feed, petfood, biofuels and more.
- Ancient roots, modern tech: For generations, humans have rendered animal fats to make items like soaps and candles. Today, rendering has evolved into a highly sophisticated, strictly regulated and technologically advanced sector.
Why rendering matters: The environmental impact of modern rendering is immense.
- North America recycles ~97 billion pounds of animal by-products annually.
- The rendering process prevents overflowing landfills and significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
Driving circular solutions: As a pioneer in circularity, our facilities actively alleviate overburdened landfills by recycling millions of pounds of animal by-products and used cooking oil every single day.
- Agriculture and pets: Customers rely on our proteins and fats to manufacture livestock feed, premium petfood ingredients and organic fertilizers that support soil and plant nutrition needs.
- Renewable Energy: We’re helping decarbonize the globe by transforming used cooking oil and animal fats into renewable natural gas (RNG), renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel.
The bottom line: Rendering is a comprehensive, elegant system. It closes the loop on one of animal agriculture’s largest material flows, ensuring that nearly every part of a processed animal is a resource we maximize. Converting it into something useful for today that will positively impact generations to come.