Pilgrim’s Guntersville’s commitment to sustainability

The Pilgrims’ Pride Corp. operation is making new investments to improve its wastewater pre-treatment operation and is carrying out plans to reduce water and energy use as well as greenhouse gas emissions.

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Pilgrim's Guntersville installed a new dissolved air flotation unit in 2015. It's one of several recent improvements. | Photo by Austin Alonzo
Pilgrim's Guntersville installed a new dissolved air flotation unit in 2015. It's one of several recent improvements. | Photo by Austin Alonzo

Pilgrim’s Pride Corp.’s Guntersville, Alabama, processing facility sits on the banks of the state’s largest lake and takes exceptional responsibility for protecting that natural resource as well as reducing its overall environmental impact.

The plant’s wastewater complex pretreats an average of 1.35 million gallons of water per process day for discharge to the city of Guntersville’s wastewater treatment system. Because of the plant’s high-profile location, commitment to excellence and its environmental stewardship, the operation was selected as the winner of the 2018 U.S. Poultry & Egg Association Clean Water Award for the partial treatment category.

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From left: Kevin Milner, regional environmental manager; Thomas Percer, complex environmental manager and Billy Clark, wastewater operator | Photo by Austin Alonzo

Wastewater treatment

The Guntersville plant processes an average of 300,000 birds per day at an average live weight of 6.1 pounds. Its wastewater operation works by screening wastewater from processing then using gravity flow into a wet well operated with pH adjustment and liquid level-based flow control to enhance the targeted chemistries deployed in a dissolved air flotation (DAF) unit. Prior to discharge, the pH is again adjusted.

The pretreatment operation is unique in that it’s run by a long tenured staff. Thomas Percer, Pilgrim’s complex environmental manager, said the seven employees account for nearly 150 years of collective service and its most veteran operator counts more than 39 years on the job.  

Recent improvements

To enhance pretreatment, Pilgrim’s Guntersville recently made major investments: the installation of a new DAF unit, technological upgrades to increase process automation and new machinery to separate meat and bones in collected offal.

The new DAF unit, installed in October 2015, replaced an older unit. The installation included the addition of four new polymer mixing tanks, new variable frequency drives on process pumps and a number of technological upgrades designed to automate processes. The automation reduced the plant’s chemical use and waste and improved the treatment performance and consistency.

Additionally, the plant recently completed new construction designed to separate meat and bones in offal. This way, meat from evisceration goes into one offal trailer and bones from second processing are loaded into a separate trailer thus creating a premium offal product.

Storm water management

The plant’s location on a hill with the lake to its north, east and west puts special attention on storm water management and the control of potential pollutants contained in the runoff. To counteract that, in 2017 the plant upgraded two storm water lift stations and their containments in order to increase the handling capacity of each station.

Pilgrim’s Guntersville also installed larger pumps and discharge piping at each lift station. In 2018, the plant expected to upgrade another water lift station. This will further help contain potential storm water runoff.

Water conservation and reuse

Pilgrim’s Guntersville is taking part in a campaign to reduce all water use by 10 percent by the year 2020. This wide-ranging initiative includes measures to reduce the use of water in normal processes as well as stepping up the re-use of water.

Percer said the company employs a water conservation team that is in charge of routinely auditing the plant and identifying areas of opportunity for waste elimination. Its staff conducts regular inspections to identify and stop leaks and other water waste. The plant uses cloud-based software to measure and monitor its daily water use.

Water re-use is focused on non-contact applications such as evisceration, bird washing, and feather and paw picking. Moreover, water treated with peracetic acid (PAA) is reused at these locations and is also used in dip tanks on the second processing conveyers instead of spray bars in order to achieve better PAA performance and conserve water. In 2019, the plant plans on employing a system to reuse chiller water overflow.

Further environmental efforts

Along with water use, the plant is working to conserve other natural resources and protect the nearby lake. Pilgrim’s Guntersville is setting aggressive sustainability goals to reduce its natural gas use by 14 percent, electricity use by 12 percent and greenhouse gas emissions by 14 percent.

To conserve electricity, inside the plant motion detectors are replacing manual light switches and more efficient light emitting diode (LED) lights are replacing fluorescent bulbs. To reduce fuel consumption and emissions, the operation is taking steps to reduce miles driven and fuel used by its vehicle fleet. Now, the plant is using iGPS pallets made of plastic rather than wood which are 35 percent lighter than wooden pallets and decrease deforestation.

The facility is also committed to recycling as much as possible. All sludge and secondary protein nutrients from the DAF is either recycled or rendered. Scrap metal, e-waste and used oil from the plant are recycled as well.

On top of that, the Guntersville complex is focused on keeping its outside grounds clean and litter free. Because of that, the plant received the Marshall County Partners Against a Littered State Business Pride Award in 2017.

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