Walmart and Sam’s Club are pioneering new sustainable practices through their “Zero Depack” program to enhance operational efficiency and reduce food waste. This initiative, which involves advanced depackaging technology, is part of Walmart’s efforts to make sustainability a core aspect of its customer and associate experience.
Walmart, a global retail giant, and its subsidiary, Sam’s Club, a membership-only warehouse club, are known for their extensive network of retail outlets across the US and internationally. Together, they serve millions of customers daily, offering a wide range of products from groceries to electronics.Â
Zero Depack is specifically designed to aid associates in efficiently handling expired or unsalable food items by removing them from their packaging. This is often a necessary step before recycling or repurposing food waste.Â
The technology simplifies the process that used to be labor-intensive and time-consuming, where associates manually separated perishable items like produce and meats from their packaging. This advancement allows for a cleaner waste stream and aims to significantly reduce the manual labor involved, improving overall workplace satisfaction and operational flow.
Walmart and Sam’s Club: Ensuring minimal food waste
The technology has been developed in collaboration with Denali, the nation’s leading recycler of organic materials, which has facilitated the installation of depackaging systems across more than 1,400 Walmart and Sam’s Club locations as of July 2024.Â
These systems enable a high separation efficiency — up to 97% of organic food waste can be extracted from trash. This high-efficiency rate underscores the potential of such technologies to improve recycling processes and minimize the amount of waste that ends up in landfills.
Denali’s technology not only supports Walmart’s recycling efforts but also contributes to its long-term sustainability objectives by transforming unsalable food products into biosolids used in various agricultural applications, such as compost or livestock feed. This is part of a broader effort to redirect waste towards more productive uses, highlighting the potential for large-scale retail operations to influence positive environmental outcomes.
Moreover, the efficiency of the Zero Depack system provides significant operational benefits. For example, during a visit to an organic waste recycling facility, Walmart operators observed a single Denali truck collecting 11 tons of organic waste from 18 different stores. This demonstrates the scale at which these efforts can impact sustainability, reducing the carbon footprint associated with waste transport and processing.
