Diverting waste from landfills has only grown more challenging over the last several years, especially for companies in the poultry and meat protein industry.
“In the past, when most things were recycled by vendors, there was more opportunity to reduce costs,” says Steve Levitsky, vice president of sustainability for Perdue. “But as China and other countries have restricted what they will take, it has become much more difficult to make money from recycling.”
That shift means Perdue has had to find other ways to keep waste out of landfills without negatively affecting their bottom line.
Recently we caught up with Levitsky to learn about the poultry company’s approach to these recycling restrictions, and how their Lewiston Woodville harvest processing facility achieved GreenCircle Zero Waste to Landfill certification.
What are the main advantages of pursuing zero waste certification at facilities?
The main advantage is the reduction of landfill space used. We only have so much land area and landfill volume capacity. If we do not recycle, reuse, et cetera, we will fill this space. Then what? Additionally, opportunities that eliminate the need to send it to a landfill, such as waste-to-energy, are not explored.
We do save money with recycling and diverting from landfills, but the cost of some other reuse and waste-to-energy options can eat up those savings. In most cases we will end up breaking even financially, but obviously there will be environmental benefits.
How did the certification process for Lewiston Woodville go?
When I got here four years ago, we had our environmental scorecard in place, we tracked recycling and waste-to-landfill, but did not have long-term goals. I created our goal of achieving 90% diversion of waste-to-landfill and having at least five facilities certified zero waste to landfill by 2022.
We worked on how to incentivize these goals on the sustainability scorecard. The facility then worked on how to reduce the waste via recycling and reuse, and identified a waste-to-energy option when it wasn’t viable to recycle or reuse.
I chose the GreenCircle Zero Waste to Landfill certification because they didn’t just look at our tracking and give us a certification. They did a thorough site review and went to our vendors to confirm that the final disposition of waste met our expectations and directions.
Lewiston was our first operation to get the certification because they made significant progress diverting waste over the past two years, and I felt confident they could meet GreenCircle’s rigorous audit and certification process. The groundwork they laid will become the blueprint for our other facilities.
What’s been the biggest challenge so far, and how did you address it?
In the poultry and meat protein industry, one of the biggest problems is contaminated packaging waste. The material used to be recycled, but with the recent restrictions from China many recycling companies stopped taking this material. So it needs to be sent to a landfill or be used for waste-to-energy because there is no other option.
We had some plants do continuous improvement projects to reduce the amount of rework needed, but we still have material that is contaminated and cannot be recycled. This is where waste-to-energy is key because we can use the material as an energy source versus putting it in a landfill. We send our waste to a facility in Norfolk that provides steam energy to Navy ships and electricity to residential homes in the area.
Any advice for fellow executives around zero waste certification?
Get your associates on board with where you are going. I had the vision and goals, but cannot take any credit for Lewiston getting certification. Director of operations Jeff Stalls, regional environmental manager Rick Harrell, environmental manager Tim Mizelle, wastewater manager Ashton Weller, and their associates on the floor got this done.
Once they understood where we wanted to go as a company, they ran with it. They found the solutions that worked for the operation, and they deserve all the credit.
