Today’s residuals, tomorrow’s resources

To us at Sonac, showing respect for the environment is not an optional extra: it is part of our core business. Our innovative and varied application of animal by-products places us among the world’s pioneers in sustainable business. It is one of many unique residuals-to-resources concepts operated by the wider family of Darling Ingredients Inc.

Sustainability runs through all our processes

In our own production processes, we pay a great deal of attention to limiting our impact on the environment. For example:

  • We extract and clean the air from our buildings and the production processes;
  • The water released during our processes is purified in biological wastewater purification plants;
  • The energy we need for production comes largely from sustainable biofuels.

Reduce your carbon foot print

Did you know the carbon foot print of many of our products is a lot lower than that of vegetable alternatives? In other words, partnering with Sonac does not just mean accessing quality ingredients, it also means boosting your sustainability performance – and helping the planet.

  • The carbon foot print of our poultry meal products for the feed industry – measured per kilogram of protein – is more than 30% lower than that of rapeseed meal, which is the best-performing vegetable meal (the difference with soybean meal and palm kernel meal is even greater), according to independent research conducted by Blonk Consultancy in the Netherlands.
  • The emissions related to land use and land use change (so-called LULUC) are also higher for vegetable meals.
  • The carbon footprints of our poultry fat, mixed fat and food grade fat products are also much lower than the footprints of soybean oil, rapeseed oil and palm oil. Soybean and rapeseed oil reportedly emit nearly 2,000 kg CO2eq per ton, while palm kernel oil emits over 3,000 kg. Our food grade and poultry fat emit less than 1,000 and our mixed fat produces under 500 kg CO2eq per ton.
  • The LULUC emissions are also higher for vegetable oils than for our animal oils. The reason is that relatively large tracts of land are needed for the production of vegetable oils, which is causing large-scale deforestation in South America and Southeast Asia.

Find out more about Darling Ingredients' sustainable promise of social responsibility

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