Our mission to be North America’s favorite maker of salads and healthy fresh foods begins with a healthy environment. This means that as we continue to grow our business to better serve families and customers across North America, we do so responsibly by preserving a healthy environment for future generations. The future and health of our business depends on our ability to conserve resources, maximize efficiencies in our supply chain, and to think outside the box when investing in solutions for tomorrow.
Our Environmental Management System (EMS) is the organization and prioritization of the facilities inputs and outputs that are documented and managed to reduce environmental impact, mitigate business risk, meet continuous improvement goals, and increase operating efficiency. The purpose is to set measurable, achievable and meaningful targets for our facilities to engage in, while in pursuit of environmental mitigation and efficiency.
As part of our EMS program, Taylor Farms is pursuing TRUE (Total Resource Use and Efficiency) Zero Waste Certification. The TRUE Zero Waste certification system helps facilities quantify their performance, find additional ways to improve their progress towards zero waste and meet customer requirements. Schillings was the second facility to partner with and pursue Zero Waste certification with Measure to Improve, an organization that specializes in helping growers shippers packers, and processors measure, improve, and promote sustainability efforts. The entire team was inspired by their fellow colleagues at our Taylor Farms Gonzales facility and felt that there was opportunity for them too also find operational efficiency improvements and cost savings. Throughout the implementation, Measure to Improve (MTI) provided onsite support, training and data tracking.
EMS Program Focus:
- Reduction – work up stream with vendors and in house with our team members to reduce the amount of materials coming into and being generated by the facility
- Reuse – investment in durable and reusable goods
- Recycle – divert materials from landfills, incinerators and the environment
Each facility is unique in their waste streams, opportunities, management, and more making the journey to Zero Waste challenging but rewarding. Schillings is an especially unique facility since half of their production and management team relocates to Yuma, AZ for 6 months out of the year. This presents a lot of personnel and resource challenges but given the structure of the certification process, the team found it not only manageable but beneficial to implement.
"The TRUE Zero Waste certification system helps facilities quantify their performance and find additional ways to improve their waste management both inside and outside of their four walls of operations."- Alejandra Sanchez, Sustainability Manager Taylor Farms