Cargill

One of the world’s biggest food producers is reducing its carbon footprint by converting food waste into fuel. Over the past year, Cargill worked with Hershey to divert 130,000 tons of unconsumed chocolate and candy away from landfills, converting them to “candy meal” livestock feed. In Brazil, its Cargill Bioenergia facilities use bagasse, a by-product of sugarcane processing, to generate clean energy that powers plant operations and feeds surplus electricity into the grid. And its factory in Ghent, Belgium, turns waste oils and fats into relatively clean biodiesel. Since July 2022, the plant has generated 275,000 metric tons of biodiesel, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 874,000 metric tons compared with using standard fossil fuels—the equivalent of taking 400,000 cars off the road for a year.