Circular Economy

Tech Partnerships Helping Walmart Optimize Food Value Chain

The retail giant recently launched two partnerships aimed at recycling food waste and enabling better-informed food-sourcing decisions.

Published 4 months ago | About a 5 minute read

Image: Denali’s depackaging process separates food from its packaging materials, producing a cleaner stream of organic material that can be turned into animal feed or compost. | Denali

Walmart partners with ‘depackaging’ innovator to improve food-waste recycling

Image credit: Denali

Walmart has announced the latest facet of its growing efforts to eliminate food waste: A collaboration with Denali — the nation’s leading and largest recycler of organic materials — to deploy the company’s “depackaging” services to help improve the food-waste recycling process at more than a thousand Walmart and Sam’s Club locations nationwide.

Denali’s depackaging technology and processes separate food from packaging materials such as plastic and cardboard — producing a cleaner stream of organic material that can be turned into animal feed, compost or converted into energy with anaerobic digesters. The depackaging services help avoid the process of manually separating food from its packaging – making it easier to recycle and reuse food waste while freeing up time for retailers. Walmart is one of the first retailers to leverage the newly implemented depackaging capabilities at scale.

Through the partnership with Denali, Walmart aims to help drive operational efficiencies for its enterprise associates; based on early testing, the program has increased the volume of potentially reusable organic content recovered from participating Walmart and Sam’s Club locations by more than 60 percent and reduced their compactor trash by an estimated 12 percent.

As of today, the program has launched in over 1,400 Walmart and Sam’s Club locations in more than 16 markets across the country — including Dallas, Houston, Indianapolis, Phoenix, Philadelphia and Washington DC; and cities across Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island – with rollout to continue nationwide into 2025.

For Walmart, this initiative is an example of how it is tackling operational waste through projects aimed at improving the effectiveness and efficiency of its waste-management practices — toward its goal of achieving zero operational waste by 2025.

“As a people-led, tech-powered retailer, Walmart is focused on driving innovations that build operational efficiency, improve store associates’ experience, and help reduce waste,” said RJ Zanes, Walmart’s VP of Facility Services. “Denali’s depackaging technology can help enable us to turn millions of pounds of potential food waste into useful products each year, while allowing our associates to devote more time serving our customers.”

Denali provides depackaging services to thousands of grocers, food manufacturers, distributors and municipalities nationwide by diverting partners’ food waste from landfills and recycling it into valuable products including compost, organic fertilizer, animal feed and clean energy. Denali’s network of depackaging facilities can separate up to 97 percent of all trash from organic food waste — including expired food products, recalled items, food scraps and spoiled deli, bakery and produce; as well as animal products, dry and liquid goods.

After piloting the program in multiple markets over several years, Denali began its nationwide depackaging services rollout in 2023 in Phoenix — where the City of Phoenix diverted 2,000 tons of food waste generated from events and activities related to the Big Game. Since then, Denali has supported the City of Phoenix and local retailers to process and reduce the amount of food waste reaching landfills. The company says it recycles over 1 billion pounds of food waste into useful products annually.

“Denali’s depackaging technology is revolutionizing the way in which food manufacturers, distributors, retailers – and the cities in which they operate – can reduce food waste,” said Ilia Kostov, Denali’s Chief Revenue Officer. “We are proud to work with Walmart and Sam’s Club to help reduce food waste at scale while simultaneously enabling the circular economy.”

Walmart-Agritask partnership to help retailer enhance produce-sourcing decisions

Image credit: Milad Mosapoor

The Denali partnership comes hot on the heels of the announcement of Walmart’s strategic partnership with crop-supply intelligence company Agritask. In collaboration with Walmart Global Tech’s Sparkubate program, the companies are piloting a tech solution from Agritask aimed at enabling sourcing managers to make more informed decisions on seasonal fruit crop yields such as cherries and blackberries, with a goal of ensuring surety of supply, reducing food waste and guaranteeing fresh produce for shoppers. Pending the pilot results, the retailer may consider leveraging Agritask solutions and insights at scale for a second season.

The pilot will deploy Agritask’s remote-sensing and data-analytics tools in various regions in the US and Mexico to provide real-time, hyperlocal insights on seasonal blackberry and cherry crops from select Walmart suppliers. These crops were selected due to their high sensitivity to temperature fluctuations and moisture levels — which can significantly affect their growth, quality, transport and shelf life. Through real-time monitoring, the collaboration will drive rapid response to adverse environmental conditions to better manage supply and thereby enhance overall produce quality.

Insights include:

Immediate alerts on emerging or forming risks and their potential impact on target crops — such as an unexpected frost harming a cherry harvest — enabling Walmart to adjust procurement strategies swiftly.
Real-time assessment of timing, delays or advances in expected harvest — allowing Walmart to proactively manage inventory levels and explore alternative sourcing options.
Updated indications on meeting yield targets throughout the growing season — empowering Walmart to optimize supply chain logistics and ensure sufficient product availability for customers.

"Dealing with challenges in purchasing and planning accuracy in agriculture due to data discrepancies and environmental uncertainties can be tough. Agritask’s technology has the potential to fill vital information gaps that sourcing managers often face when predicting yield," said Kyle Carlyle, VP of Sourcing Innovation and Surety of Supply at Walmart. "Teaming up with Agritask enables Walmart to delve into more streamlined and sustainable sourcing practices, ensuring we consistently deliver fresh, high-quality products to meet customer demand."

“Walmart’s global scale and commitment to strengthening sustainable supply chains makes them the ideal partner for Agritask’s tech solutions,” said Agritask CEO Ofir Ardon. “We are thrilled to have Walmart become the first retail partner to integrate Yield Intelligence, adopting our data-driven innovation built on 15 years of optimizing agricultural supply chains to reshape how enterprises collaborate with suppliers. Together, we are uniquely positioned to implement scalable, climate-smart and risk-ready solutions that optimize sourcing from the ground up.”