Environmental innovation

At Cargill, we’ve found that the know how we’ve developed in order to assure compliance with environmental regulations and manage risk within our own operations is in demand among our customers, suppliers and other partners. We are leveraging our leadership in food and agriculture to tackle complex environmental challenges by sharing our global knowledge and expertise, thereby helping our customers shrink their environmental footprints.

Environmental innovation examples

 

• Cargill Process Optimizers. In trying to save energy at our own plants, we have developed several proprietary libraries of knowledge and formed a business, Cargill Process Optimizers (CPO), to take that knowledge to key customers that seek to capture similar value in their own operations. Customers save an average of up to 15 percent on energy use and see up to a 25 percent reduction in water use after working with CPO, as well as capacity increases of up to 10 percent. 

  Cargill's Fargo, North Dakota plant receives nearly one-third of its thermal energy needs from the city's landfill.

• Converting methane. We are partnering with several U.S. cities to help convert methane from landfills and waste water treatment plants into useable energy sources. This mitigates the negative environmental impacts of releasing methane into the atmosphere, while generating revenue for the cities and reducing our energy costs. 
• Anaerobic digester. We built and operate an anaerobic digester on the 10,000 cow Bettencourt Dairy Farm near Wendell, Idaho. The digester is converting cow effluent into more than two megawatts of power per year to be sold back into the local power grid. Co-products from the process are being made into organic fertilizer and digested solids for animal bedding.
• Comprehensive footprint. Cargill Meats in France partnered with McDonalds to create a carbon footprint for its complete chicken meat supply chain in Europe. The result was a comprehensive footprint of a full chicken supply chain from egg to finished product. The analysis helped lead to a 10 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions per ton of finished product at one processing facility.

More examples of Helping Others Shrink Their Footprint: