With a mission to make organics recycling the norm, not the exception, Denali works alongside waste haulers, municipalities, and recyclers to build a more sustainable future, one community, one partner, and one solution at a time.
As the largest organic recycling company in the U.S., Denali is on a mission to replenish the Earth by repurposing waste. Their work is essential to keep water clean, reduce the need for new landfill capacity, build soil fertility, and reduce society鈥檚 reliance on fossil fuels.
Denali started 10 years ago with one location in rural Arkansas. Denali Board Chairman, Andy McNeill founded the company as part of a spinoff from Terra Renewal, where his career in the organic waste industry began as President and CEO. Terra Renewal was a waste disposal company that handled and disposed of nonhazardous, organic waste for several industry segments. After leaving Terra Renewal, McNeill founded Denali in 2014 and the company has quickly grown through acquisitions of best-in-class companies focused on the collection and recycling of organic materials.
Today, Denali has grown to more than 1,500 employees, a fleet of 1,300 trucks, and serves all 48 states with services that provide true end-to-end organic recycling services across the U.S. The company addresses every aspect of organic materials landfill diversion with a fleet of specialized trailers that pick up food waste from thousands of grocery stores, food retailers, special events, convention centers, hotels, and sporting venues across the nation. Their services and products touch thousands of acres, hundreds of locales, millions of tons of material, and nearly every person who purchases and consumes food. In 2024, Denali recycled more than 14 billion pounds of organic materials and of that total, 2.6 billion pounds was food waste that was converted into compost, renewable energy, or animal feed.
In addition, Denali鈥檚 unique de-packaging technology separates any food from its packaging to create a clean stream of organic material, which is repurposed into compost, mulches, natural fertilizer, and animal feed. It processes about 15 tons of waste per hour. They also collect used cooking oil and transform it into biodiesel. This year, Denali unveiled ReCirculate鈩�, their high-grade compost made with unsalable food collected from grocery stores. These grocers and retailers then can offer the compost to their customers to fuel their home gardens and plants while participating in the circular economy. ReCirculateTM is currently available in more than 600 Walmart locations across the U.S.
Denali owns some facilities and partners with others, including several municipalities to manage their compost facilities, to provide services across the U.S.鈥�48 states and Puerto Rico鈥攕ervicing any business that uses or produces organic material, such as food waste, used cooking oil, and biosolids.
Denali also serves as a trusted partner to waste haulers and recyclers who are seeking a reliable solution for handling organic materials. Whether through managing compost facilities, providing depackaging infrastructure, or integrating into existing waste management systems, Denali offers flexible partnerships that support broader landfill diversion and sustainability goals.
Embracing Food Organics
Mandates for food recycling continue to expand across states, cities, and counties. These mandates, paired with many companies instituting sustainability programs and goals (like net zero emissions, reduced waste, etc.) have influenced the growth of Denali. Due to growing demand, they have invested in more de-packaging machines and expanded their infrastructure and footprint to make this effort easier and more cost effective for its customers, including thousands of grocery stores.
鈥淥ur challenge is bringing awareness to the communities we serve. Food recycling is a best kept secret. There are industries like grocery that have been early adopters and, once they adopt food recycling programs, they also experience savings in labor and expenses as compared to their current solutions. Often, retailers designate employees and teams to separate organics from their packaging to be recycled. Denali鈥檚 depackaging machines eliminate this need as they automatically separate organics from its packaging. We also provide our customers with data that helps manage and lower the amount of surplus food generated on the front-end,鈥� explains Eric Speiser, Chief Revenue Officer of Denali.
Educating indusries, like event venues and businesses, to the benefits of recycling unconsumed food can be a challenge because they either are not aware of their options or do not have a full understanding of the benefits to the planet, to their business, and to the food system. This includes less food waste reaching landfills, which reduces greenhouse gas emissions, fuels the circular economy, reduces shrink with data-based feedback, and it helps retailers/grocers to save on labor costs. Denali invested聽significant time in building relationships and educating prospective customers by sharing their story and the value it brings not just to the businesses they serve, but also to the environment through traditional marketing, industry events, and face-to-face meetings. Those adopting sustainability initiatives see the benefits and quickly embrace food recycling.
The process starts in grocery stores where employees collect non-consumable food and deposit it in bins outside the store location. A Denali driver picks up the material in the bins weekly, sometimes more, depending on the volume of non-consumable material generated by location. Denali transports the material to one of its own or a partner鈥檚 processing facilities where the food waste is delivered. Packaged food is then run through a de-packaging unit that efficiently separates the food from its packaging, producing a clean stream of organic waste.
The packaging material is then processed through one part of the machine and taken for recycling. On the other side, the depackaging machine transforms the food waste into a material that either goes toward making compost or fertilizer, or into an aerobic digester to create renewable fuel or is processed into animal feed.
鈥淥ur renewable product breakdown, based on unconsumable food collected from our retail customers, is approximately 56 percent compost, 35 percent animal feed, and 9 percent anaerobic digestion,鈥� says Speiser.
Advancing Safety
Denali uses the Samsara platform to ensure that their commercial fleet of trucks operate safely and efficiently. Samsara touches many aspects of the company鈥攆rom asset use, vehicle health, and route-based logistics to hours-of-service compliance and improving driver behavior. Denali sees amazing results with Samsara to ensure drivers are operating its fleet of vehicles in a safe and courteous manner. Using AI technology along with both forward facing and driver facing cameras, they can see what hazards the drivers are seeing, as well as ensuring safe practice habits from behind the wheel. Currently they have a customized driver scorecard, in which they monitor speed limits, following distance, seat belt use, harsh braking, in addition to distracted driving. They can provide coaching to drivers when they see behavior that needs to be improved. In 2024, Denali even began a program to recognize each regional driver with the highest driver score each quarter during the year.
Denali is also dedicated to continually advancing its safety programs, striving for ongoing improvement in outreach and performance to exceed industry standards. Recently, Denali employees completed 99 percent of their assigned monthly safety training. They also have implemented Denali Safety Fundamentals, a required training that all Denali safety-sensitive employees must complete on their first day of work. It is regularly updated and distributed companywide.
The Denali Safety Fundamentals is a fully customizable computer-based learning platform that every new safety-sensitive employee completes their first day of employment. This program enables Denali to set its expectations for employees of working safely each day. Topics include Fall Protection, PPE requirements, Hazard Communication, Accident Reporting, and First Aid, just to name a few.聽 Whether you are a CDL driver, bag line operator, or heavy equipment operator for Denali, all of these personnel undergo this curriculum. The goal is for each employee to work safely each day.聽鈥淭his helps ensure our expectations in working safely and for our employees to make safety a top priority,鈥� emphasizes Speiser.
Supporting Local Communities
Employees are also active in several organizations throughout the communities they serve. One way Denali can enhance the communities in which they live and operate is through the support of community gardens and landscaping efforts. Denali annually donates a large truckload of compost, equal to approximately 35 cubic yards, to KNOX, Inc., a nonprofit organization that supports the residents and businesses of Hartford, CT, through urban farming and horticulture opportunities. Denali鈥檚 donation provided nutrient-rich compost for 21 gardens throughout the City of Hartford. Denali also donates compost and soil to other organizations in various parts of the country.
Additionally, every year since 2011, Denali has selected an employee to represent the company for the Leadership Coachella Valley program. Produced by the Palm Springs Chamber of Commerce, it is designed to identify, motivate, and develop future community leaders. The program encourages community involvement by providing knowledge and perspective on valley-wide needs and concerns. Participants meet current community leaders in forum and group discussion settings to learn about the issues affecting the Coachella Valley, develop their personal and professional leadership skills, build relationships with others who seek to grow as leaders, and find solutions to the issues facing Coachella valley, and get involved in the community. Denali employees are selected for this program based on qualities management looks for in strong leaders鈥攁 focus on continuous improvement, strong communication skills, ambition, and leadership potential.
Once per month, from September through June, participants in Leadership Coachella Valley program attend all-day seminars to delve into community topics and issues, covering a wide range of subjects such as Art, Culture, and Recreation; Housing; Government and Public Safety; Transportation and Energy; Economic Drivers; Healthcare and Social Services; Education; Environmental Issues; and Communications and Media. The seminar format includes hands-on visits to locations that directly relate to each day鈥檚 theme.
Building a Sustainable Future
Speiser points out that Denali is not only focused on the expansion and rollout of their de-packaging technology across the U.S. to facilitate clean streams of organic material transformed into compost, mulches, animal feed, and natural fertilizer, but the company鈥檚 newest product, ReCirculateTM, allows some of their partners鈥攍ike Walmart鈥攖o transform unsalable food into a valuable compost product, which they can, in turn, sell in their stores. Today, ReCirculateTM is available in more than 600 Walmart stores across the U.S. Denali continues to explore new organic recycled products that can further expand its circularity efforts in the near future. 鈥淎t Denali, keeping organic waste out of landfills is not just what we do, it is who we are,鈥� said Speiser. 鈥淎s we expand our reach, our mission is to make organics recycling the norm, not the exception. We work alongside waste haulers, municipalities and recyclers to build a more sustainable future, one community, one partner, and one solution at a time.鈥� | WA
For more information, call (844) 2-COMPOST.