US Foods Honored By Green Awards from Alameda County

US Foods, one of the nation's largest foodservice distributors, has demonstrated that systematically reducing a company's environmental footprint can result in significant savings and a competitive advantage. Their San Francisco Division, based in Livermore, recycles cardboard, paper, shrink-wrap and other materials, and is progressively designing waste out of their operations with reusable instead of disposable packaging.

Recycling efforts have saved the facility $90,000 per year in avoided disposal costs and recycling revenue.

In addition, the division recycles water from refrigeration units, runs its fleet of delivery trucks on a biodiesel blend, has slashed electricity consumption by 37 percent and supplies over a third of the facility's remaining energy needs with its own one-megawatt solar panel array.

Their Livermore location actively works with vendors and customers to help them "green" their own operations, too. This has earned the company the 2011 StopWaste Business Partnership Mentor Award from local public agency StopWaste.Org, whose staff has supported US Foods in their waste reduction efforts since 2006.

US Foods is one of 11 Alameda County organizations honored by StopWaste.Org for outstanding achievements in waste reduction and environmental performance. They are the first to receive the Mentor Award, a new category added to the 12-year-old recognition program this year. The awards were presented during a ceremony at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center on Oct. 28.

Chuck Brown, Director of Safety, Security & Facilities at the Livermore location, has championed the green efforts since US Foods started working with the StopWaste Partnership.

"I knew all along that going green wasn't only the right thing to do, but also a financially lucrative business decision," Brown said. "The challenge was to set it up right and get employee buy-in. That takes time."

The StopWaste Partnership's technical team worked with Brown to identify recycling vendors for key materials and supported the purchase of recycling bins with a $5,000 business mini-grant. They also assisted in the development of Standard Operating Procedures to roll out the new recycling practices division-wide.

The changes produced a substantial return on investment almost immediately.

"Instead of paying the garbage company to haul away our cardboard, paper and shrink wrap, we are now separating those materials from the trash and selling them to a recycler," Brown said.

The efforts earned the Livermore facility Green Business Certification, and a competitive advantage.

"In this day and age, it's not enough to deliver on price and product or service alone," Brown said. "Customers want their vendors to be environmentally conscious, too."

The Livermore facility's proactive outreach has caught the industry's attention on a national level, too. In 2010 US Foods was invited to present on business greening strategies at the Annual Food Safety Summit in Washington, D.C.

US Foods' most recent greening endeavor tackles discards from transport packaging, such as broken wood pallets and used shrink-wrap, in an effort to prevent waste before it happens. "Sure we can recycle these materials, but it's even more effective to design that waste right out of our process," Brown said.

Using funds from the sale of recyclables, he and his team have replaced 2,500 limited-use wood pallets with durable, reusable plastic pallets. Eventually they aim to convert all of the 5,000 pallets currently in circulation.

The company is also looking to reduce the amount of shrink-wrap used to secure products on pallets during transit and warehousing. Along with several other US Foods facilities in the country, the San Francisco Division is piloting thick rubber bands, long enough to fit around a pallet up to 4 feet by 4 feet.

"It's looking pretty good so far," Brown said. "If we replace shrink-wrap with these reusable rubber bands, we can save some 50 tons of plastic film per year."