Divert, Inc., a circular economy company on a mission to prevent food from being wasted, today announced that its partnership with United States Cold Storage (US Cold), the premier provider of refrigerated warehousing and logistics, processed more than 2.5 million pounds of unsold food and beverage products from seven California facilities in its first 15 months. The material was transformed into renewable energy and fertilizer instead of going to landfill.
The partnership reflects a growing shift among food and beverage brands and their logistics partners to comply with state-level landfill diversion mandates, manage disposals securely, and meet sustainability goals. Divert’s vertically integrated Circularity Platform enables the company to respond flexibly to customer needs and recover multiple value streams from unsold products, treating them as a resource rather than a disposal problem.
Once efforts to sell or donate products are exhausted, US Cold routes them to Divert’s Integrated Diversion & Energy Facility in Turlock, California. There, proprietary High-Recovery Depackaging (HRD) and anaerobic digestion technology convert the material into renewable natural gas (RNG), nutrient-rich agricultural fertilizers, and recovered water. The process keeps value circulating locally and provides US Cold and its customers with the security, documentation and environmental benefits they increasingly expect.
For brands like Oatly, whose products move through US Cold’s network, the partnership extends existing manufacturing sustainability commitments through the end of the supply chain. According to a recent sustainability report, Oatly has already eliminated production waste to landfill and aims to eliminate all waste to landfill (including waste from warehouses) entirely by 2030. Through its partnership with Divert, US Cold supports these extended commitments, handling Oatly’s unsold inventory with the same environmental rigor at every stage.
Distributors commonly face destruction volumes that vary by location, product type, and season. Traditional service models often can’t handle that variability economically, which can be a barrier to sustainable outcomes. Through dynamic pricing and optimized material routing, Divert helped US Cold scale its sustainable destruction program across multiple locations.
“Our customers trust us to be good stewards of their brand, and that responsibility doesn’t end when products can’t be sold,” said Sara Cook, Sustainable Development Manager, United States Cold Storage. “In building a flexible program around our operational needs, Divert has enabled us to deliver secure product destruction without sacrificing sustainable outcomes, giving brands like Oatly confidence that unsold product is being handled with the same environmental care they’ve built into their own operations.”
As cited in a recent case study by Divert, during the first 15 months of the partnership, material processed from seven US Cold facilities in California resulted in:
- More than 2.5 million pounds of unsold food and beverage products securely processed
- Over 8,500 MMBtu of renewable natural gas created
- ~450 metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions avoided, equal to about 40 trips around the equator for an average gasoline-powered vehicle
For Oatly specifically, the partnership processed 126,000 pounds of product, generating nearly 80 MMBtu of RNG and avoiding about 4 metric tons of CO2e, equal to roughly 10,000 miles driven.
Divert’s Turlock facility delivers renewable natural gas to the pipeline and provides fertilizer and soil amendments to partners like Western Milling and Crème Brulee Farming Co., supporting local farms across the region to grow new food. At full capacity, the facility can annually produce enough renewable energy to power more than 4,000 homes, generate enough liquid nitrogen fertilizer to support 112 million pounds of strawberries, produce enough soil amendment to treat up to 2,000 acres of farmland, and offset 23,000 metric tons of CO2e.
Divert has over 7,800 existing customer locations across the food supply chain that are actively recovering value from its nationwide Circularity Platform. With a USDA-estimated 930 refrigerated warehouses locations nationally, Divert is well positioned to expand across this important sector.
“The impacts we’ve generated with US Cold and its customers in California are a great example of the closed loop our Circularity Platform creates,” said Ben Kuethe Oaks, SVP, Commercial at Divert. “Our platform allows us to deliver results like these across our national footprint, supporting customers across the food value chain – from CPG brands, to logistic partners, to retailers – as they navigate source reduction, waste diversion, and circularity goals.”