Ndustrial Serves Up First-ever Turkey Emissions Tracker to Reveal Energy Gobblers for Thanksgiving

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Nov 19, 2024, 09:00 ET

Energy intensity platform goes on a farm-to-table journey, dishing emissions reduction strategies across the turkey supply chain

RALEIGH, N.C., Nov. 19, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Ndustrial, the AI-powered energy intensity platform for industry, today launched a first-of-its-kind Turkey Tracker, which serves up the juiciest information on emissions and costs associated with the farm-to-table journey our Thanksgiving turkeys make every year. The tracker has a cornucopia of data to gobble down as it tracks emissions for a turkey's trot across the supply chain, which also serves as a useful indicator for energy waste and costs.

Most consumers only think about the short journey of the cooked turkey from the fork to their mouths — but what about everything that leads up to that delicious bite? Consider that in the U.S., 210 million turkeys are produced every year and 46 million of those turkeys are for Thanksgiving alone. The average turkey weighs over 30 pounds and is shipped over 1,500 miles, using resources starting from the farm to a processing center to distribution to retail and finally to our plates. The new tracker unpacks the casserole of complexity behind the turkey supply chain to better understand emissions and costs associated with bringing this holiday meal from more than 2,500 turkey farms to millions of tables across the country.

The Ndustrial Turkey Tracker dishes up a feast of interactive visuals and a compelling storyline on a single platter, carved and ready to tell the story of a festive bird from its humble beginnings at a rural turkey farm to its last supper. The tracker takes viewers through the entire journey, showing relative emissions for each step, along with other findings for ways businesses and consumers can improve efficiency for the journey.

"Consumers are hungry to understand the environmental impact of their purchasing decisions now more than ever, but want the information to be served up to them on a silver platter. Factors like buying organic; going local; or roasting, smoking or deep-frying are all important considerations, which is why we've designed this tool to bring simplicity back to the Thanksgiving dinner table," said Ndustrial co-founder and CEO Jason Massey. "Ndustrial's turkey tracker shines an oven light on the critical variables that shape carbon emissions and costs for one of the most popular and symbolic foods in America: the Thanksgiving turkey. It's stuffed with all of the fowl-facts businesses and consumers need to know about the turkey supply chain, offering insights on ways we can improve the emissions of a turkey's journey across the U.S.—and that's something we can all be thankful for."

A Thanksgiving turkey's trot across the supply chain offers a smorgasbord of opportunities to reduce supply chain emissions and associated costs. Tasty tidbits include:

Departing the farm: Turkeys move from farms to processing plants in diesel-powered trucks; a few short-haul routes have been electrified.
Chilling out: Before packaging, turkeys must be cooled to 40 degrees F or colder which requires a lot of energy in addition to the energy used for unloading, processing, palletizing and loading.
Keep truckin': Turkeys that are ready to ride are loaded onto trailers equipped with a Transit Refrigeration Unit (TRU) or reefer, which keeps the trailer cool during processing. Electric TRUs (eTRUs) can replace the fuel used to keep turkeys cool with electricity, reducing 70% of emissions during loading and unloading and while parked.
Frosty the turkey: Turkeys are inspected at the warehouse to ensure quality and temperature compliance before being loaded into a blast freezer for 36 hours and then moved to frozen storage at 0 degrees F (-18C). Efficient warehouses can store more food at higher temperatures while avoiding times of peak grid demand, helping to reduce emissions and cost while ensuring food safety and quality.
A grocery store near you: Currently no major long-haul routes are electrified, and the TRU also runs on a diesel engine throughout the journey (even if it is a hybrid reefer). There are a few smaller delivery vehicles going fully electric with an opportunity for more in the future.
Home for the holidays: On average, consumers drive eight miles round trip to bring turkeys home. Consolidating trips, using electric vehicles, and avoiding food waste can do a lot to minimize emissions.

About Ndustrial
Ndustrial provides software and services to help the $60B industrial market combat inflation and climate change by optimizing energy intensity — the crucial metric of energy, emissions and cost required for one unit of production. By uniting production data with energy usage for some of the most complex, energy-demanding operations in the world, Ndustrial's AI-powered solutions enable smarter energy decisions in real-time. The company has helped customers like Lineage, ABB and W.L. Gore (makers of Gore-Tex) avoid over $100M in energy spend to date. Learn more at ndustrial.io.

SOURCE Ndustrial