Walmart keeps tech at the forefront

Walmart is partnering with Denali and will roll out depackaging services that can help improve the food waste recycling process at more than 1,000 Walmart and Sam’s Club locations nationwide.

The depackaging tech aims to help drive operational efficiencies for Walmart associates and, based on early testing, has increased the volume of potentially reusable organic content recovered from participating Walmart and Sam’s Club locations by more than 60% and reduced compactor trash by 12%.

The depackaging tech and processes separate food from its packaging materials like plastic and cardboard to produce a cleaner stream of organic material that can be turned into animal feed, compost, or converted into energy with anaerobic digesters.

The depackaging services help avoid the process of manually separating food from its packaging.

Walmart is one of the first retailers to leverage the newly implemented depackaging capabilities at scale.

“As a people-led, tech-powered retailer, Walmart is focused on driving innovations that build operational efficiency, improve store associates’ experience, and help reduce waste,” said RJ Zanes, vice president of Facility Services at Walmart. “Denali’s depackaging technology can help enable us to turn millions of pounds of potential food waste into useful products each year while allowing our associates to devote more time serving our customers.”

Related:Here’s Walmart’s take on future shopping and adaptive retail

Walmart has been on a technology kick as of late, especially regarding food waste.

The Bentonville, Ark.-based retailer recently announced it was partnering with Agritask, a crop supply intelligence company, on a pilot to find a technology solution to enable sourcing managers to make more well-informed decisions on seasonal fruit crop yields.

The initiative, in collaboration with Walmart Global Tech’s Sparkubate program, aims to secure surety of supply, reduce food waste, and guarantee fresh produce.

Walmart also plans to add four highly automated perishable distribution centers and automated tech to five existing centers.

The tech will help build pallets engineered to optimize efficiency for merchandising at the store level and minimize product damage.

In June, the company announced it was going digital with its shelf labels, a transition that will take two years to complete.