Pollution Prevention for Food Processors

In food processing facilities, raw materials are stored, transferred, and eventually processed into consumable goods. These processes all can result in waste material and additional wastewater. Additionally, each process requires a certain amount of energy. Waste product can be costly. Sometimes waste is generated in the form of undesirable parts of raw materials such as pits, rinds, or peels and sometimes raw materials are wasted unintentionally.Waste can be costly to your facility, both in lost product costs and discharge/disposal costs.

Energy costs can also be a concern in food processing facilities. Motors, pumps, refrigeration units, conveyors, fans, compressed air systems, and other pieces of energy-using equipment can add to your expenses. If these pieces of equipment are not being used, maintained, or replaced properly, they can perform inefficiently and use more energy than is required.

These pages will help you understand energy use, waste, and wastewater in food processing facilities and how to reduce them, if possible. Waste reduction, water use and wastewater information, and energy efficiency information is provided for a variety of food processing facilities on these pages.