Danone North America announces zero waste to landfill goal

Danone North America, a food and beverage producer with an office in White Plains, New York, has announced a goal to achieve zero waste to landfill across all North American facilities by 2025.

“As one of the world’s largest Certified B Corporations and a market leader in yogurt, plant-based, premium dairy and coffee creamers, embracing our responsibility to support a more sustainable world is pivotal,” says Sherri Livengood, director of environmental affairs at Danone North America. “The zero waste to landfill goal creates a bridge to our company’s existing One Planet, One Health, frame of action, which includes our commitment to reducing food loss and waste in our U.S. operations by 50 percent by 2030 and achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.”

Zero waste to landfill goals is achieved when at least 99 percent of waste generated throughout the manufacturing process is diverted from landfills. As a result, waste produced throughout food and beverage production, including handling, storage, processing, packaging and distribution, is reused, upcycled, recycled, composted or sent for energy recovery.

Danone North America says it is working with third-party partners like Veolia ESS and with local organizations, including ShurGreen Farms, Langdon and Sons, Wasatch Resource Recovery and EBI Montreal, to bring forth solutions to divert waste from landfills to instead be reused, recycled or composted.   

Livengood says each Danone North America facility will determine the best way to reach zero waste to landfill by conducting a waste mapping exercise to identify all of the waste going to landfill from the plant. From there, each facility implements projects and processes that ensure food waste is going to sustainable outlets, and the final portion of waste is going to a waste-to-energy facility.

“Danone North America is committed to keeping waste from going into landfills in our communities by either eliminating it altogether or repurposing the waste for other uses in support of a circular economy, which seeks to ensure that material we produce stays in the economy and diverts waste from the landfill where it would contribute to pollution,” Livengood says. “Together, with our partners, our teams are working cross-functionally, internally and externally, to manage products and processes to avoid waste and eliminate it where we can, reduce volume and toxicity of waste and materials and conserve and recover resources by prioritizing recycling and reuse wherever possible.”

In 2020, 4.8 percent of Danone North America’s waste was sent to landfills across its company facilities. When zero waste to landfill status is fully achieved by 2025, 1 percent or less will be sent to landfills. So far, 15 percent of the company’s manufacturing facilities in North America have achieved the zero waste to landfill goal.