Do you ever stop to consider the grocery section?
How all this food got here, and what final destination awaits it? Be it someone’s gi-tract or rotting away in a landfill? The produce aisle is hardly a place for existential thought, but an informed observer may have trouble producing anything but.
In 2022, Americans threw away, incinerated or otherwise didn’t eat about 78 million tons of food, according to national nonprofit ReFED. That’s more than a third of the 235 million tons in our food supply.
A lot of this waste occurs in a grocery store when unsold food goes bad.
"I mean, first and foremost, when we have, you know, waste from a food perspective, whether it be expired or whether it have, you know, lost its cold chain, our associates would go pull it, they would ultimately take it to a bin in the back of the store, in a refrigerator."
RJ Zanes is vice president of facility services for Walmart U.S. His day-to-day involves ensuring items sold by Walmart get to stores on time. But he also helps the corporation work toward loftier environmental goals by captaining the solid waste team.
"A lot of our zero emissions initiatives run through our organization," Zanes said. "Such as how we move from high GWP or global warming potential refrigerants to low GWP refrigerants. How we create circularity in all of our goods for sale and ensure that they are recycled and disposed of properly and responsibly. And that's where Zero DePack falls into, that portion of my overall everyday workload."
Zero DePack is a new technology that Walmart is partnering with organic waste disposal company Denali to utilize. It’s a large contraption that uses scales and sensors to automatically separate food from its packaging. It then processes the organic matter into a different– yet usable– form.
Zanes said the operation begins when a Walmart store associate pulls an unsold food item from the shelves. Next they take it, packaging and all, and simply toss it into a bin in the back of the store.
"We have our logistics infrastructure that would come on a specific frequency to pick up the waste," he said. "Our associates go out prior to the scheduled pickup, put it into the bin that ultimately gets picked up by one of our logistics infrastructure trucks and vehicles that then is taken to either a transfer station— if we don't have the infrastructure or the technology here locally, it will go to a transfer station, get transferred to another vehicle, a larger vehicle, that can take multiple quantities of tonnage, worth of waste. It then gets transferred to where the technology sits."
The technology being a Zero DePack unit. Zanes said the final form and purpose of uneaten food varies depending on the material being refined.
"Say, if it is fresh food waste and it is going to a location that we repurpose it for mulch, it is then put into that technology that then de-packages all of that food waste," he said. "That food waste then gets pushed out as a sludge on the backside. Packages go one way. Sludge goes the other way. That sludge is then mixed with various levels of vegetation— such as the trees that we have trimmed on our properties— and gets pushed into the mix of of all of that food waste sludge. It then goes through a curing process. They mix it, they continue to turn it, allow it to settle, they filter it further, and then they turn it into a fine compost that our farmers use."
Food can also be turned into veterinarian-regulated feed for cattle and even converted to methane, which will ultimately become natural gas.
Walmart has used this technology for about a year now. There have been logistical challenges, but the advantages of the new technology are apparent. Zanes said associates are now spending less time de-packaging products thanks to the new equipment.
Stacy Chaparro is deli and bakery lead at Walmart Supercenter #5260 in Rogers. In addition to the bakery and deli, she oversees all fresh food departments, including produce and meat. When food reaches its sell-by date, it’s her job to make sure it reaches the appropriate receptacle in the correct form. Before Zero DePack, that meant it was free of all packaging, which was not a quick task for her team.
"They would spend hours, like two hours doing that," Chapparo said. "Whereas now we just claim it out and then we just put it in the bin, or, like, in the tote itself."
She leads the way to the back of the deli. A few large bins filled with unopened hot food like wraps and corndogs are waiting there. Chaparro said wraps and sandwiches were especially difficult because almost every ingredient belongs in a different bin.
"Just throw it in here," she said. "And this is all stuff from the hot case that expired, like, for the time limit. And here's like the corn dogs that we made earlier that didn't sell. And, so now we don't have to take it out of the package, and then we don't have to separate like the chicken and the hot dog."
According to the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, Walmart produced more than 1.2 million tons of new plastic packaging from December 2020 to December 2021. Only 7% of that plastic was made from post-consumer recycled content.
But Zanes said they’re committed to being a sustainable company.
Walmart has stated a goal of allowing zero waste into landfills and incineration in its operations in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. by 2025. Although, the company also has stores and facilities in Africa, Asia and South America. Walmart also aims to reduce operational food waste by 50% by 2030– Zanes says he is proud to take point in that endeavor.
"I'm an avid hunter," Zanes said. "I love getting out in the outdoors, and I want my grandchildren and their grandchildren to experience what I've experienced throughout my lifetime. And it takes us putting these investments corporately into play to make sure that we save our planet and ensure that our future generations have the ability to live just the same way we are today."
He said reducing food waste is just one lever Walmart is pulling to reach its sustainability goals.
"I think that what I'm most proud of is the team," he said. "We'll continue to innovate. The team is after making sure that we get to that 100% mark, with getting to 100% circularity and all of our process mitigating and eliminating all of the waste that we have, as well as getting to a zero emission state across the overall platform, it will take all of us. It's not one of us. It's not somebody in a home office somewhere that's creating it takes all. Our associates out in the field. It takes all of the other businesses, all of our communities, to make this happen. And ultimately we will be at the forefront, continuing to lead, continuing to innovate, continuing to celebrate and get all of the communities involved to eventually, hopefully create a zero emissions planet and a zero waste planet is the overall goal, right?"
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. The authoritative record of KUAF programming is the audio record.
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