Texan by Nature is excited to recognize Darling Ingredients Inc as a 2023 TxN 20 honoree for their leadership in conservation and sustainability. Darling Ingredients’ commitment to conservation, their projects, programs, best practices, and lessons learned are an example and inspiration for us all.

Honoree Industry and Size: Agriculture–Enterprise

Company Overview
Darling Ingredients Inc. (NYSE: DAR) is the largest publicly traded company turning edible by-products and food waste into sustainable products and a leading producer of renewable energy. Recognized as a sustainability leader, the company operates more than 260 facilities in over 15 countries and repurposes approximately 15% of the world’s meat industry waste streams into value-added products, such as green energy, renewable diesel, collagen, fertilizer, animal proteins and meals, and pet food ingredients. To learn more, visit darlingii.com. Follow us on LinkedIn.

What is Darling Ingredients’ conservation and sustainability mission and why is it important to your culture?
Sustainability is a core part of our business. Our innovative solutions salvage proteins, fats and other animal and food byproducts to produce critical products including food, feed and fuel. By repurposing resources that would otherwise go to waste, we create resource efficiencies, prevent waste-related emissions and reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills. Though our business drives sustainable solutions through waste reduction and the production of sustainable goods, we also recognize the importance of reducing the environmental impact of our own operations. Our short- and long-term goals and commitments promote continued action and accountability. Darling Ingredients is committed to upholding and growing the sustainable operations and practices that are the foundation of our business. As the world faces climate- and resource-related challenges, the future depends on society’s ability to find viable ways to meet ever-increasing demands for food and energy. Darling Ingredients serves the agri-food industry by repurposing food waste, that would otherwise be discarded, into valuable bio-nutrients and biofuels , supporting a circular economy. By respecting and utilizing natural resources, we positively contribute to tackling today’s climate challenges and remain focused on clean air and water, safe food and feed, and giving back to communities where we operate and our employees live, work and play.

“Sustainability is at the core of Darling Ingredients. We repurpose  and recycle organic material,  transforming them into essential ingredients that do everything from feeding animals, to fertilizing crops, to fueling planes and nourishing people.  Our unique size and scale allows us to enable entire industries to be less wasteful and more sustainable, and we continually seek out ways to maximize resources and help move the world toward a more circular economy. We’re proud to be honored as one of the 2023 Texan by Nature 20 because Texas has an important role to play in creating a sustainable world, and Darling Ingredients is proud to play a leading role in shaping that future.”

– Ethan Carter, Director of Sustainability, Darling Ingredients

How is conservation and sustainability a part of Darling Ingredient’s business strategy?
Sustainability is our business. At Darling Ingredients, we transform the unused into the invaluable. Over the past 140 years, this company has become the most important platform for extracting the hidden potential of our world’s resources and turning them into sustainable solutions for everyday life. We take what would typically be considered refuse and efficiently transform it into invaluable ingredients and in-demand products. 

In the meat production process, only about 50% of an animal makes it to a dinner plate. Keeping the other 50% out of landfills and incinerators requires innovative, sustainable solutions. Darling Ingredients creates those solutions, repurposing approximately 15% of the world’s meat industry waste into value added products, including essential products like green energy, renewable diesel, collagen, fertilizer, animal proteins and meals, and pet food ingredients. 

Our innovative services not only prevent waste from entering landfills but also reduce waste-related emissions around the world.

What are Darling Ingredient’s short and long-term goals as they relate to conservation and sustainability?
Darling Ingredients is committed to reaching net-zero emissions by 2050. At the end of 2022, we also committed to setting science-based climate targets and validating them with the Science Based Targets initiative.  These targets will inform our decarbonization strategy in the coming years. We achieved our goal of reducing water withdrawal intensity by 5% three years early.  Darling returns more water to the environment than we withdraw, and we are working to ensure that our water withdrawals do not have negative impacts, as we work toward sustainable water use throughout our operations. We are also undertaking an effort to evaluate biodiversity impacts to identify what actions are needed to protect biodiversity at our facilities and throughout our supply chain.

Who at Darling Ingredients is leading your conservation and sustainability efforts and what are some examples of employee engagement in conservation and sustainability at your company?
Darling Ingredients’ Chairman and CEO Randall C. Stuewe and Suann Guthrie, Vice President of Investor Relations, Sustainability and Global Communications, have been integral to the company’s conservation efforts. In 2022, we also added new leadership in our sustainability department, hiring a director of sustainability, to help define our strategy, set targets and enable change in our global operations.

Cleaning La Sorgue River On Saturday June 4, 2022, the city of Isle sur la Sorgue organized a morning cleaning of the La Sorgue River, located in the South of France near Rousselot in the Isle sur la Sorgue facility. Rousselot is a company of Darling Ingredients. More than 20 employees volunteered alongside others to collect and dispose of 1.5 tons of waste from the river.

The Chicago Parks District Darling Ingredients collects and donates 90,000 gallons of used cooking oil from Chicago eateries, including Arby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings and The Wendy’s Company. The cooking oil is then processed into biodiesel 

The Park District has used biodiesel, which burns cleaner than ordinary diesel fuel, to fuel park equipment ranging from lawnmowers to beachcombers to log loader trucks. 

What conservation and sustainability programs and projects does Darling Ingredients lead and participate in?
In 2011, Darling Ingredients partnered with Valero Energy on a 50/50 joint venture—Diamond Green Diesel (DGD). Located in Norco, Louisiana, and Port Arthur, Texas, our partnership utilizes primarily waste fats and oils to produce renewable diesel. The renewable diesel produced at DGD is unique in that, unlike ethanol or biodiesel, it can be seamlessly integrated into preexisting petroleum-based infrastructure and is easily transported by pipeline, rail or truck. 

The transportation fuels produced at DGD are up to 80% less emissions intensive than traditional fossil fuels, with the added benefit of preventing used oils and fats from entering landfills. In 2022, DGD produced 780 million gallons of renewable diesel, the emissions reduction equivalent of taking 1.3 million cars off the road. 

In late 2022, we opened our newest renewable diesel plant in Port Arthur, Texas, with a nameplate capacity of 470 million gallons per year. This expansion increased the total annual production capacity of DGD to approximately 1.2 billion gallons of renewable diesel, providing customers with a reliable and sustainable alternative to traditional fossil fuels.

In early 2023, we announced the final investment decision on a Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) project at the Port Arthur plant. Targeted for completion in 2025, the project will allow approximately 50 percent of the plant’s production to be upgraded to SAF, making DGD one of the largest SAF manufacturers in the world.

How do you see the future of conservation and sustainability evolving, and what role will Darling Ingredients play in that progress?
Global population growth, climate change, increased life expectancy and inequalities have put pressure on the natural resources that provide society with food, feed, fuel and general well-being.  Now, more than ever, we need to find viable ways to meet the needs of current and future generations. When it comes to animal agriculture, about 50% of the animal makes it to the dinner plate. The other 50% requires innovative, sustainable solutions to avoid landfills or incineration. That’s where Darling Ingredients comes in. Darling is the largest publicly traded company that takes the other 50% of the animal and turns it into valuable ingredients. We create specialty food ingredients that are used to make gelatin capsules for the pills we take, thickeners for the foods we eat and collagen peptides  that help our hair, skin, nails and ligaments. We sell ingredients to companies that make feed for pets and livestock like swine, cattle, turkeys and fish. And if it can’t be fed to a human or an animal, we take those materials and make green energy. Where others see waste, we see opportunity.

How does Darling Ingredients quantify investment and return on conservation and sustainability?
Because sustainability is core to our business, we are focused on continuing to expand our investment in sustainability by expanding the offerings we provide for our customers. We are able to realize the return on this investment through our company’s financial performance.  As we look to help the world decarbonize and meet global sustainable development goals, we will set lower thresholds for return on investment that account for the benefit of improvements in our environmental performance.

What is the one lesson that Darling Ingredients has learned from your conservation and sustainability efforts that others can take back and think about applying within their own space?
Being a leader in the business of circularity for more than 140 years has taught us many lessons. The greatest of which is this: the best way to protect nature is to act like nature. Nature recycles nutrients, and we mimic this by taking animal byproducts that have the potential to be treated as waste and create valuable ingredients. Looking for opportunities to recreate circular economies that occur in nature to unlock value.

Why is Texas an important home or base of operations for Darling Ingredients?
Darling has made Texas its home because of the state’s culture, location and business values. Centrally located, it provides regional, domestic and even international logistical benefits. Darling employees love living, raising families and working in Texas. The business environment embraces innovation and technology, and the tax burden is low compared with other states. The regulatory environment is friendly to business, yet still matches the company’s philosophy of environmental stewardship.

Learn more about Darling Ingredients’ conservation and sustainability efforts here.