2Sustain

P&G underscored its commitment to environmental sustainability with the announcement last week that its Auburn, Maine site is now zero waste to landfill. The Auburn site, which produces feminine care products, is the first P&G manufacturing plant in North America to achieve this goal.

According to P&G, the plant now recycles or reuses more than 60 percent of its waste. The remainder is converted to energy. The company says forming business partnerships was critical for meeting the zero waste goal.

For instance, the P&G Global Asset Recovery Purchases (GARP) team, which is charged with finding external partners that can turn waste and non-performing inventory into something useful, connected the plant with a site solution provider who helped sort all recyclable materials and convert existing non-recyclable materials to energy through incineration. The electricity from the incineration is used by the incineration facility and then, the excess is sold to the local power company. P&G estimates that the GARP team has diverted tens of thousands of tons from landfills while delivering tens of millions of dollars in cost recovery in the past year alone. (more…)

Starbucks wants 100 percent of its cups to be reusable or recyclable by 2015.

And, last month the company completed a six-week pilot project that brings it one step closer to reaching that goal.

Starbucks, working in partnership with International Paper and Mississippi River Pulp, LLC, proved that its used paper cups can be recycled into new paper cups. The successful pilot project means that used cup material generated by Starbucks (and other retailers) has potential value in the recycling industry.

“This innovation represents an important milestone in our journey,” Jim Hanna, Starbucks director of Environmental Impact, said. “We still have a lot of work to do to reach our 2015 goal, but we’re now in a much stronger position to build momentum across the recycling industry. Our next step is to test this concept in a major city, which we plan to do in collaboration with International Paper and Mississippi River in 2011.”

Starbucks is a pioneer in what’s known as the “cup-to-cup” concept. The company launched the industry’s first paper cup containing post-consumer recycled fiber (PCF) in 2006, following several years of collaboration with Mississippi River, the only pulp mill in the US that has successfully recycled used cups into fiber suitable for producing new cups. (more…)

Consumers are becoming increasingly more aware of sustainability issues, and now many are clamoring for food and grocery retailers to curb waste. In fact, a new poll from IGD consumer research shows that 29 percent of shoppers now think reducing waste should be one of the main sustainability priorities for the industry.

But, are food and grocery retailers listening?

In the UK, they are. Last week, 33 of the UK’s leading food and beverage companies announced that they are voluntarily committing to prevent 75,000 tonnes of waste being created by the end of 2012. In addition, they have challenged themselves to divert a further 150,000 tonnes of waste from disposal, mainly from landfill and sewerage, to more productive outputs such as anaerobic digestion. (more…)

Results from the fourth annual “Sustainability in Packaging” survey reveal companies are placing increased importance on environmental issues when making packaging decisions.

The 2010 study, which was conducted in October by Packaging Digest and the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, found that: (more…)

Stonyfield has launched new plant-based packaging for its multipack cups.

The company says the move to PLA (polylactic acid) from petroleum-based polystyrene has been “a long time in the making.” Ultimately, though, this sustainable packaging will:

• cut Stonyfield’s greenhouse gas emissions by 48 percent

• reduce the company’s total global warming impact by 9 percent, and

• raise the bar on new standards for sustainable packaging and the use of bio-plastics.

(See earlier posts for similar initiatives from Coca-Cola and from Fisher and Frito-Lay.)

“I’ve been at Stonyfield for almost twenty years working on sustainability, and it’s very rare that we have an opportunity to really make a giant leap forward towards that new green economy getting off of oil,” Nancy Hirshberg, VP of Natural Resources at Stonyfield said. “So this project for me has been so personally fulfilling. It’s involved everyone from all over our company, from R&D and engineering, and purchasing, and marketing and natural resources to come together to really innovate and to do something that’s new, that really gets us beyond just using less stuff and onto the new materials of the future.”

Development of this plant-based packaging is a major accomplishment. However, the company even went a step further and open sourced everything it has learned.  CE-Yo Gary Hirschberg invites others to join Stonyfield on this “amazing journey:”

Kudos to Stonyfield for their continued commitment to sustainability and for helping others reduce their environmental impact, as well.

More information about how Stonyfield traveled from “cornfield to cup” is available here.