By Steve Levitsky, Vice President, Sustainability, Perdue Farms

Earth Day reminds us that the modern environmental movement – born on this date 48 years ago when 20 million Americans rallied together across the country – demands action and accountability, especially on the part of companies. That’s why we announced our “2022” goals for aggressive reductions in greenhouse gases, water use and solid waste.

By 2022, we will:

• Reduce our Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gases by 30%
• Reduce our potable water use by 25%
• Divert more than 90% of our solid waste from landfills and achieve zero solid-waste certification for at least two of our facilities.

A conscious effort to reduce our environmental impact is nothing new at Perdue. Our internal environmental scorecard factors into our management compensation.

We have major solar energy installations in Maryland and Delaware, a biogas project in Kentucky that uses methane from a wastewater lagoon to generate electricity and hot water, and a bio-mass fueled co-generation and boiler project in North Carolina. Our recently opened soybean crushing plant in Pennsylvania uses steam from an adjacent county waste-to-energy system, eliminating onsite fossil-fuel boilers.

Sixteen years ago, we became the first – and still only – poultry company providing farmers on the environmentally sensitive Delmarva Peninsula alternative uses for their poultry litter. Last year, with a move to large-scale composting, that project expanded to include a broader range of nutrient-rich by-products of poultry production and processing.

We’ve invested in highly efficient trucks and trailers that carry more payload with less fuel. And our corporate office is LEED Platinum Certified for environmental sustainability.

In 2014, we established baselines to track our progress in reducing carbon emissions, fossil fuel use, water use and electricity consumption.  

We’re proud of those accomplishments. But we wanted to make this Earth Day about what we’re doing, not what we’ve done. Our 2022 goals will drive continuous improvement and make environmental sustainability an even bigger part of how we run our businesses.

For the metrics that factor into greenhouse gases and water, we’ll track progress against pounds of product. That measurement focuses on our practices and processes, not just production volume.

To reach our goals, we’ll need some big, innovative projects. Equally important, we’ll need the ongoing commitment of our associates. Earth Day encompasses awareness and engagement. Our five-year environmental sustainability goals will make those components of Earth Day an increasingly important part of our company.