The U.S. generates 63 million tons of wasted food every year while 47 million Americans experience food insecurity. Divert, a circular economy company on a mission to prevent food from being wasted, offers an end-to-end solution to prevent wasted food, facilitate edible food recovery for communities in need, and converts unsold food into renewable energy. Its customers leverage Divert’s solutions to gain insight into their inventory of unsold food, allowing them to make better purchasing decisions, waste less and sell more. For food that is still unsold and still safe to consume, Divert works with customers to redirect it towards donations. Finally, Divert takes any non-donatable food and leverages its proprietary depackaging and anaerobic digestion process to create renewable energy. Divert’s new Integrated Diversion & Energy Facility is the first facility in the company’s aggressive expansion roadmap to address the dual wasted food and food insecurity crises in the country.
Divert opened its first Integrated Diversion & Energy Facility in Turlock, California in Q4 2024, pioneering a first-of-its-kind approach to addressing the wasted food crisis. The facility takes unsold food products that would’ve ended up in a landfill and processes the material into carbon-negative renewable energy and nutrient-rich soil amendment. The RNG is then injected into Pacific Gas and Electric Company’s (PG&E) natural gas transmission line, a first-of-its-kind interconnection for California, which is bringing the state closer to its sustainability goals as it works toward reaching net-zero carbon pollution by 2045.
The facility helps California food manufacturers, distributors, food service operators, and other industrial companies comply with organic waste requirements in accordance with the state’s Senate Bill 1383 (SB 1383) regarding organic waste reduction. The legislation requires large waste generators to redirect food waste from landfills through waste prevention or donations and encourages the use of anaerobic digestion to create renewable energy.
At capacity, the facility can process 100,000 tons of unsold food products each year, mitigating approximately 112,000 metric tons of CO2e. This is equivalent to removing more than 26,000 gas-powered cars from the road every year. In addition, nearly 225,000 MMBtus of RNG will be produced annually.
Without infrastructure solutions like the ones Divert is putting into place, a significant amount of wasted food will continue to end up in landfills, producing dangerous methane emissions as it breaks down and degrades, further exacerbating climate change. The Turlock facility is part of Divert’s aggressive expansion roadmap to construct 30 facilities to be within 100 miles of 80% of the U.S. population. In doing so, Divert will be able accelerate its impact against wasted food and food insecurity in the U.S. Divert has additional integrated facilities in development in Washington state, North Carolina, and Ohio, among other areas.
