Waste Reduction and Recycling

Waste and Recycling Practices

In each of our production facilities, we have goals to decrease the amount of packaging used in our finished products and decrease waste sent to landfills. In 2021, Pilgrim’s Moy Park continued to maintain its commitment of zero waste to landfill across all facilities, while Pilgrim’s UK also achieved its goal of zero waste to landfill in its first year.

In Europe, Pilgrim’s Moy Park was the first poultry company to undertake a commitment to reduce packaging and food waste in its supply chain. The initiative is part of an ambitious campaign to combat the use of plastics and packaging in its business and in the industry. The company plans to lower its global use of packaging by 5% each year, while simultaneously raising the percentage of recyclable packages by 5%. Among actions planned, Moy Park will collaborate with researchers and supply chain partners to develop sustainable packaging for its entire product portfolio and will eliminate single use plastic from its office and restaurants. Moy Park and Pilgrim’s UK have adopted the strategy of “Remove, Reduce, Recycle and Research” and will begin using 100% recyclable rigid packaging by 2022. All other packaging will be widely recyclable by 2025.

As a company, we continue to explore alternative materials that offer recyclability and technologies that allow us to reduce the amount of packaging needed, while still maintaining strict product safety requirements. In our day-to-day operations, we work to improve recycling opportunities at each facility and reduce overall waste generated.

Product packaging provides a unique challenge for our industry. To prevent contamination at recycling facilities, packaging materials used at production facilities that come into contact with blood, meat or fat cannot be recycled, per the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) standards. Due to the nature of our products, this reduces our ability to recycle packaging material used at our production facilities.

The meat processing industry is incredibly efficient from a food waste prevention standpoint. We process byproducts, such as blood, meat and bones, to create saleable materials and reduce waste. Nearly 100% of inedible byproducts are rendered to produce tallow and blood and bone meal, which we then sell to other companies to be used in consumer goods, such as cosmetics and pharmaceuticals or in livestock or poultry feed. Pilgrim’s UK has commitments to both the Sustainable Development goal 12.3 and to Courtauld Commitment which are both working towards halving food waste by 2030. Currently only 0.1% of Pilgrim’s UK’s production is classified as food waste. Actions currently employed to reduce this number even further include using the Waste Hierarchy to derive as much value as possible from all product and donating food products to food redistribution charities to prevent food waste.

We have continued to focus on improving data quality related to waste and packaging, as a result we are tracking more indicators and are able to better understand and monitor our waste streams. Improved data quality also leads to more complete measurements which are higher than partially complete past data. As a global company, from 2019 to 2021, our total waste generated decreased by 14%. However, our waste to landfill unfortunately increased 20%.

As a highlight, both our Pilgrim’s Moy Park and Pilgrim’s UK teams maintained their commitments to send zero waste to landfill across all facilities in 2021. 

In the U.S., Puerto Rico and Canada, our percentage of biodegradable and recyclable packaging material used increased by 11%; and our total packaging material per ton of finished product decreased by 12%. We continue to stay focused on increasing our recyclable packaging, especially as we expect packaging material per ton to increase as a result of growing customer and consumer demand for smaller pack sizes.

The data below represents our efforts at tracking waste and recycling at our facilities. In some cases, the local municipality collects all waste and recycling, which makes tracking the data impossible. We are currently working to develop collaborative partnerships in these locations, so that we can share data to better track our performance.