Food and Beverage Companies Go Green

Closer to home, Kraft has partnered with TerraCycle, (www.terracycle.net) an upstart Trenton, N.J., firm, which takes packages and materials that are challenging to recycle and turns them into handbags, umbrellas and other products.

Schools, community groups and other non-profits collect specific used packages. TerraCycle then “upcycles” each material into an eco-friendly product. One program collects used energy bar wrappers and donates two cents each to the collecting organization. Wrappers are braided into durable purses and backpacks. Another uses Nabisco cookie wrappers, which are fused together into sheets of waterproof fabric, which are then made into umbrellas, shower curtains, backpacks, placemats and other products. The third program reuses drink pouches, which are sewn into tote bags, handbags and other durable items.

Several Kraft brands, including Balance bars and South Beach Living bars, Capri Sun beverages and Chips Ahoy! and Oreo cookies, are now the lead sponsors of TerraCycle Brigades.

Stonyfield: Pioneering greenie

As far back as 1983, Stonyfield Farm (www.stonyfield.com) co-founders Samuel Kaymen and president/CEO Gary Hirshberg created a mission statement “to serve as a model that environmentally and socially responsible businesses can also be profitable.”

The Londonderry, N.H.-based yogurt maker was among America’s first companies to go carbon neutral, in the 1990s. Stonyfield also gives 10 percent of its profits to organizations that “help protect and restore the environment.”

From 1995 to 2005 it reduced facility energy use and the associated CO2 emissions per pound of product by one-third, saving some $1.7 million and 46 million kWh – enough energy to power 4,500 homes for a year. It also prevented more than 14,000 tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere, Hirshberg told Industry Week.

The company’s 50 kW solar photovoltaic array on its yogurt making facility is the largest in New Hampshire. It is in the vanguard of wind energy, reforestation, methane recovery and energy efficiency projects, and it created the first “how-to guide” showing other companies how to offset emissions. Its award-winning program to minimize solid waste has prevented over 16 million lbs. of materials from going to landfills or incinerators (equal to taking more than 1,400 cars off the road for one year).

Coca-Cola Enterprises: Reducing its carbon footprint

It may not be a Coach, but this handbag, created by TerraCycle, says a lot about recycling.

Red Bull bought a fleet of diesel hybrid delivery trucks from Navistar International. The trucks achieve 30-40 percent better fuel efficiency and emit up to 33 percent less hydrocarbon emissions and 35 percent less nitrogen oxide emissions than standard diesel trucks.