Product Destruction: De-packaging Canned Condensed Milk

One of our product destruction clients needed to securely destroy 200,000 cans of condensed milk. Something was wrong with a large batch of canned condensed milk. The product did not meet their rigorous production standards. They needed to be sure it would not be one of those bad surprises, that the milk would never re-enter the marketplace.

The product was a new one for us, so when the cans began to arrive, we did some testing. The condensed milk was stickier, thicker, and more viscous than foods that food destruction projects we have done before.

We decided to add a bit of water to increase the flow through our shredders. Other than that, we used our normal procedures. We shredded the cans and prepared them for recycling. The milk was diverted into a large vat and sent to the largest bio-digester in North America, three miles from our Oakland facility.