Century Foods of Hormel Foods was selected as the company’s 2013 Environmental Sustainability Best of the Best champion for achieving a recycling rate of 93 percent and achieving zero percent waste to landfill status at their four plant locations.
In 2012, they recorded a 90 percent of waste recycling and for this year, the target aimed was 100 percent.
It was expected to be difficult because there are a lot of little things that really are difficult to recycle, and that involved engaging all the employees for this particular work. Environmental sustainability is something everybody can connect to, noted, Wade E. Nolte, vice president, operations, Century Foods.
A combined effort of employee awareness, partnerships with buyers, vendors and local groups, and new in-plant processes were applied to achieve these results.
Organized as a yearly program, Hormel Foods enables the company wide Environmental Sustainability Best of the Best competition, which rewards internal teams that have recognized efficiency improvement areas and acted subsequently to implement any changes.
In 2013, entries produced throughout Hormel Foods attained resource savings of 154 million gallon reduction in water use, a reduction of more than 180,000 MM Btu of energy, a 7,900,000 reduction in kWh of electricity, and a reduction of more than 1,000 tons of solid waste.