At Darling Ingredients, we believe nothing in nature is wasted. For more than 140 years, we have been repurposing and recycling materials from the animal agriculture and food industries, transforming them into essential ingredients that do everything from feeding animals to fertilizing crops to fueling planes and nourishing people.
Many people do not realize that in food production, only half of the animal ends up on your plate, while the other half is considered “waste.” That’s where we come in. We are not just recycling, we are upcycling--always searching for ways to maximize resources and create something new from the old.
How we transform waste into value
Rendering is the process of repurposing unused parts of the animal and turning them into something better, instead of sending them to landfills or incinerators. That raw material is sent to one of our factories worldwide and separated into fats and proteins. In the process, we also extract water. In fact, we treat and return more water back to the environment than we use at our facilities.
In the end, we create the highest value for these fats and proteins, which today represent more than 350 ingredients that are essential for everyday life.
The power of scale: Our global advantage
To best serve the animal agriculture industry, we need to be located where the animals are. We have operations in nearly all the major animal production areas, including the United States, Brazil, Canada, Europe, Australia and China. In fact, approximately one in every six animals used in food production ends up in one of our worldwide factories.
Because of our unique size and scale, we are able to collect enough raw material to create species-specific products, such as poultry meal, feather meal and poultry fat. These are important ingredients in premium pet foods due to their high nutritional content.
Leading with nature for a better tomorrow
As a family of brands and businesses that spans the globe, we are the number one publicly traded company of our kind. Our unique scale allows us to make entire industries less wasteful and more sustainable, while helping to keep our own business sustainably profitable.
Being in business for more than a century has taught us many lessons. The greatest of which is this: The best way to protect nature is to act like nature.
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