Happy World Nature Conservation Day! Celebrated each year on July 28th, this international holiday serves as an important reminder of the significance of preserving our environment’s natural resources, from the air we breathe to the water we drink.
What better way to conserve our environmental resources than by recycling?
Rendering: The Original Recycling
Did you know that rendering is considered “the original recycling?”
For hundreds of years, discarded animal by-products have been repurposed into clean and safe rendered material — long before formal recycling processes were established.
While the organized rendering industry as we know it today has been around for approximately 150 years, the practice of transforming recycled organics can be dated long before that. In its earliest days, rendered animal fat from cooking over an open fire was collected and transformed into tallow, often used for cooking, soap making, candle making, and even as a fuel source for lighting. Today, it’s still here and making a comeback in popularity as a high-smoke-point, nutrient-dense cooking oil.
While rendering started as a small-scale process, often practiced by individuals, today it’s a large-scale, industrial operation sanctioned by strict quality and safety standards, including those outlined within the Rendering Code of Practice (COP). Among reducing our carbon footprint, supporting water recovery, encouraging food waste sustainability, and supplying green energy production, rendering makes a widespread, positive environmental impact in more ways than one.
Recycling Starts at Home
While we’ve explored the history of rendering and its large-scale recycling achieved today, nature conservation is ultimately made possible one choice at a time. Whether that means repurposing food jars and containers, getting creative with the items you already have at home, or donating reusable goods to local charities or thrift stores, a collective dedication to recycling goes a long way toward preserving our planet’s natural resources for more sustainable uses.
To learn more about the many applications of rendering today, and its wide-scale impact on conserving our resources, take a look at our educational video: Rendering: Every Part Has A Purpose.
