Bob’s Red Mill hit a 92% waste diversion rate in 2025, according to the company’s first-ever impact report.
The Milwaukie, Oregon-based grain miller spent nine months building the report, its first attempt at putting a number on sustainability work that had previously existed mostly as internal metrics.
Julia Person, sustainability manager at Bob’s Red Mill, led the process alongside the company’s brand and marketing teams.
“We reached a point where we felt we had a meaningful story to tell,” Person said. “We’ve made significant progress across our sustainability and social impact efforts, and we wanted to share not only what we’ve accomplished, but also what we’re still working toward.”
The company’s story begins with packaging, with packaging redesign being one of the report’s most quantified sections.
The oatmeal cup
The company’s oatmeal cup, redesigned in stages since 2022, is projected to eliminate 94.9 tons of plastic annually once it reaches a fully plastic-free version, with 8%, or 14,918 pounds, of that total still a projection tied to the final redesign step.
Bob’s 2022 elimination of the cup’s foil lid was quantified at 170,500 pounds of waste avoided annually. In 2024, the switch to a thinner liner avoided another 4,356 pounds.
A comparable figure for the 2023 switch to recycled content in the peel-top is not in the report. The packaging’s overall weight held steady even as its share of virgin plastic dropped, and Bob’s Red Mill chose not to count that shift toward its cumulative savings total rather than claim a weight reduction that didn’t occur, according to the company.
The process of moving to a 100% plastic-free cup is complex, with both food safety and food waste considerations.
“Packaging decisions involve balancing many factors,” Person said. “The main purpose of our packaging is food safety and maintaining the integrity of our product. We must ensure our healthy ingredients stay fresh and not go to waste.”
Other packaging
Right-sizing and light-weighting have also been applied to the company’s flagship stand-up pouches for flour, oats and grains, Person said, though the company did not provide a specific weight-reduction figure.
On recycled plastic content, Bob’s Red Mill did not offer a current percentage.
“Increasing recycled plastic content is one of the pillars on our Sustainable Packaging Roadmap, and it’s an area we’re actively evaluating as it continues to evolve,” Person said.
Where the oatmeal cup redesign comes with a documented, line-item history, the pouch and recycled-content pillars remain framed as ongoing evaluation rather than reportable progress.
Diverting waste
Bob’s Red Mill’s waste diversion rate reached 92% in 2025, settling above the 90% threshold for TRUE Gold certification. Person said the certification is a starting point, not a finish line.
“We look to TRUE as a roadmap toward continuous improvement,” she said, without giving a target date for closing the remaining gap to zero waste, a pattern consistent with the report’s approach elsewhere, where hard numbers anchor completed initiatives but future targets remain open-ended.
Person said the remaining 8% splits evenly between two streams: 4% is scrap wood and non-repairable pallets sent to local waste-to-energy facilities, and 4% is landfilled material generated primarily from breakrooms and office waste.
The company’s waste-to-landfill rate, calculated as pounds sent to landfill divided by tons of finished goods produced, fell from 7.5 in a 2020 baseline year to 3.7 in 2025, a 65% cumulative reduction. In tonnage, that meant 5,803 tons diverted from landfill last year.
Consumer-facing packaging recovery runs through a partnership with home pickup service Ridwell, which Bob’s Red Mill co-promoted through its newsletter and its now-closed Whole Grain Store, offering customers a free first month of service.
On the industrial side, packaging scrap goes to ByFusion, which compresses it into ByBlocks, a construction material the company says produces 80% fewer emissions than cement block. Bob’s Red Mill has used its own scrap-derived blocks to build a trophy case and welcome sign at its Innovation Kitchen.
The company’s food waste program is anchored by its position as the first food manufacturer to join the US Food Waste Pact.
“We’re committed to collaborating with industry peers to target, measure and act to reduce food waste,” Person said.
In 2025, the company repurposed 2,913 tons of food waste, much of it routed to a regional farm partner as animal feed. A separate production-line fix cut waste on that line by 70%, a story Person pointed to a Food Waste Pact case study and video to tell rather than detailing further in the report itself.
Looking past this first report, Person said the next horizon runs beyond the company’s own walls.
“Community collaboration is the horizon where we want to continue to innovate and make improvements,” she said. “The most effective sustainability efforts create value for multiple stakeholders at once, throughout our supply chain.”
