At Marel, we feel a profound responsibility to care for the planet we share. We’re constantly scoping out ways to do better. And year after year, we get measurable results.
We work towards continuously lowering our energy expenditure and using renewable resources wherever possible.
Armed with the latest technology, we find ways to make the most efficient use of resources in order to minimize the environmental impact of our own as well as our customers’ operations.
Maximizing yield is key to decreasing waste in food production, which is why our innovators are constantly improving the accuracy, efficiency, safety and traceability of food processing.
We’re a leader in water treatment solutions
Food processing requires a lot of water, both for the processing itself and for cleaning equipment and the rest of the factory. Inevitably, this also results in a lot of wastewater, which needs to be dealt with safely and efficiently. Our team of water treatment experts works with processors worldwide to determine the most sustainable system for their individual needs.
Our data-driven approach reduces carbon footprint
We work diligently to measure and minimize our environmental footprint. Most of Marel’s larger facilities have installed an energy monitoring system from eTactica. The two largest indirect contributors to our carbon footprint are energy consumption in Marel facilities and employee air travel.
We work to offset the impact of our growing operations by installing solar cells on the roofs of locations undergoing renovations, for example, and our travel platform monitors the environmental impact of employee travel.
By collecting and visualizing this data, we can make informed decisions that align with our sustainability goals.
We use less energy to do more
We continuously upgrade our manufacturing equipment to increase its energy efficiency, and we assess the feasibility of solar panels and sustainable heating solutions in all new and renovated Marel buildings.
We’ve installed electric car-charging points, replaced incandescent light bulbs with LED lighting where feasible, and installed energy management systems in our larger manufacturing facilities, to name just a few of our initiatives.
Our primary sources of electricity are renewable energy and natural gas, with around 57% of all electricity consumed by Marel produced by renewables and 29% made by burning natural gas.
Animal well-being is our priority
At Marel, animal well-being is a priority right from the start of the development process. The design of all of our systems prioritizes animal well-being and adherence to the strictest ethical standards. We use a sustainability scorecard during the research and development phase of our innovation process to assess the feasibility of a project according to a matrix of sustainability indicators, including animal well-being.
More data means less waste
Being conscientious about the operational and environmental impact of waste management, we collect data to conduct full-scale analyses of our waste-streams and gain a comprehensive overview of our waste footprint.
All major manufacturing locations report on standard waste management metrics. We measure how much of our waste ends up in landfills, for example, compared with how much is either reused or recycled.
This enables us to improve how we digitalize and advance our waste management efficiency, such as monitoring and improving how much of our total global waste volume we recycle or reuse.
A novel use for our SensorX technology
Many parts of Marel equipment use plastic, so we need to ensure the polyethylene scraps are properly recycled. It turns out that our SensorX bone detector can also identify different plastics, which means we can sort plastics and guarantee our waste for recycling is 100% polyethylene.