How Sunny Delight Hit Zero Waste

By maximizing recycling through waste audits, setting up a recycling protocol at manufacturing plants and implementing paperless procedures, beverage manufacturer Sunny Delights has achieved zero waste to landfill — way before other companies.

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Is striving to get to zero waste, where your company (or even you as an individual) sends no trash to landfills — really, literally none — possible?

It’s difficult but it is, even for a mid-sized company, possible. Witness Sunny Delight Beverages Co., a $532 million Cincinatti-based manufacturer.

In its 2010 sustainability report (pdf) chief sustainability officer Ellen Iobst writes, “This year, SDBC achieved an outstanding accomplishment by reaching its zero waste to landfill goal at all manufacturing sites three years ahead of schedule.” Iobst continues:

Our dedicated employees at each plant site worked diligently to divert all generated waste away from landfills and into recycling waste streams. They sent their last load of waste to the landfill in April 2010 and they continue to create new waste recycling opportunities. Sunny Delight is among the first in its industry to accomplish this zero waste to landfill feat.

. . . This zero waste goal was achieved by maximizing recycling through waste audits, researching recycling facilities and setting up a recycling protocol at each facility. Great effort also was taken to reduce office supplies by implementing paperless procedures and by reusing a variety of storage containers on-site.

. . . Achieving and maintaining zero waste to landfills is not an easy accomplishment. Creating new waste streams is challenging. For example, the concrete scrap resulting from a plant’s construction project had no known reuse purpose. However, the site’s sustainability team worked to find a recycler who would take it. Diligence and creative thinking by our employees drove our outstanding zero waste result.

Waste Management World reported that “these goals were hit through a combination of measures. For example in a move towards a paperless workplace, vendors must now submit their invoices electronically. This has had the knock-on benefit of speeding the review and approval of documents, and reducing paper and storage costs. Expense reports are also only accepted electronically now.”

Waste Management also reported that in 2007, 36% of Sunny Delight’s waste was landfilled — 1,140 tons out of 3,166 tons — and that by 2009, that percentage had dropped to less that 10%. In 2010, it hit zero.

As well, the “initiatives have delivered an impressive $2.44 million saving in two years,” wrote Waste Management.

Topics

Leading Sustainable Organizations

Corporate adoption of sustainable business practices is essential to a strong market environment and an enduring society. What does it mean to become a sustainable business and what steps must leaders take to integrate sustainability into their organization?
More in this series

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Comments (2)
RC Thompson
Even if you come up a little short of the goal, no trash what-so-ever, then that will be a huge improvement from where you started.  This is a great challenge-I could see a 'cult' like movement getting behind this!
Georjean Adams
Other than doing away with paper invoices, it sounds like the focus was on recycling waste rather than reducing the production of waste in the first place. Is this a case of low hanging fruit vs the tough work of process redesign? Georjean Adams