August 9, 2026. Divert, Inc., a circular economy company on a mission to prevent food from being wasted, announced that its partnership with United States Cold Storage (US Cold), the premier provider of refrigerated warehousing and logistics, processed more than 2.5 million pounds of unsold food and beverage products from seven California facilities in its first 15 months. The material was transformed into renewable energy and fertilizer instead of going to landfill.
The partnership reflects a growing shift among food and beverage brands and their logistics partners to comply with state-level landfill diversion mandates, manage disposals securely, and meet sustainability goals. Divert’s vertically integrated Circularity Platform enables the company to respond flexibly to customer needs and recover multiple value streams from unsold products, treating them as a resource rather than a disposal problem.
Once efforts to sell or donate products are exhausted, US Cold routes them to Divert’s Integrated Diversion & Energy Facility in Turlock, California. There, proprietary High-Recovery Depackaging (HRD) and anaerobic digestion technology convert the material into renewable natural gas (RNG), nutrient-rich agricultural fertilizers, and recovered water. The process keeps value circulating locally and provides US Cold and its customers with the security, documentation and environmental benefits they increasingly expect.
For brands like Oatly, whose products move through US Cold’s network, the partnership extends existing manufacturing sustainability commitments through the end of the supply chain. According to a recent sustainability report, Oatly has already eliminated production waste to landfill and aims to eliminate all waste to landfill (including waste from warehouses) entirely by 2030. Through its partnership with Divert, US Cold supports these extended commitments, handling Oatly’s unsold inventory with the same environmental rigor at every stage.
As cited in a recent case study by Divert, during the first 15 months of the partnership, material processed from seven US Cold facilities in California resulted in:
- More than 2.5 million pounds of unsold food and beverage products securely processed
- Over 8,500 MMBtu of renewable natural gas created
- ~450 metric tons of CO2 equivalent emissions avoided, equal to about 40 trips around the equator for an average gasoline-powered vehicle
For Oatly specifically, the partnership processed 126,000 pounds of product, generating nearly 80 MMBtu of RNG and avoiding about 4 metric tons of CO2e, equal to roughly 10,000 miles driven.