Perdue Farms Operation Certified Zero Waste to Landfill in Industry First

(Photo: Wastewater manager Ashton Weller, second from left, with the recycle team in Lewiston from left to right: Ronnie Revell, Curt Dail, Charles McEachern, and Cliff Smallwood. Credit: Perdue)

by | Feb 27, 2020

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Perdue Farms Operation Certified Zero Waste to Landfill in Industry First

(Photo: Wastewater manager Ashton Weller, second from left, with the recycle team in Lewiston from left to right: Ronnie Revell, Curt Dail, Charles McEachern, and Cliff Smallwood. Credit: Perdue)

Perdue Farms says that its harvest operation in Lewiston Woodville, North Carolina, received GreenCircle Zero Waste to Landfill certification. This marks the first time a poultry company has achieved that type of certification in the United States, according to Perdue.

All of the waste materials that leave the Lewiston Woodville facility avoid the landfill via GreenCircle’s acceptable means of diversion, Perdue said. That includes reuse, recycling, and waste-to-energy.

Third-party certifier GreenCircle provides certification services for products, buildings, and operations. Certifying zero waste to landfill requires starting with a material flow and mass flow analysis, which GreenCircle then uses to quantify and certify that a percentage of waste has been diverted from landfills.

To receive certification, Perdue’s Lewiston Woodville facility went through a process that included auditing all the waste streams, inspecting all waste receptacles, and assessing all third-party waste management companies to check on management methods and diversion rates, the poultry company said. GreenCircle also made recommendations based on what the certifier found.

“Every aspect of the operations’ waste was assessed, including the personal protective equipment worn by associates, the process used to minimize contamination of the cardboard recycling stream, and the reuse of oil onsite,” Perdue noted.

In 2018, the company established a five-year goal of decreasing the solid waste sent to landfills by 90%. Compared to their 2015 baseline, Perdue reported last year that they had decreased solid waste sent to landfills in 2018 by 74.5%. Their turkey processing facility in Washington, Indiana, reached 92% diversion in large part by sending trash to a thermal conversion center that turns it into steam and electricity for the Indianapolis power grid.

Lewiston Woodville’s GreenCircle certification is just the beginning, Perdue Farms vice president of sustainability Steve Levitsky said. The poultry company plans to have five more facilities go through the audit and certification process by the end of 2022, he added.

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