Amidst a pandemic, can corporations still keep their sustainability promises?
As part of its environmental goals, Perdue Farms released its Fiscal Year 2022 Company Stewardship Report which focuses on four areas: food, environment, animal care and people and partners. In 2018, Perdue established its 2023 environmental sustainability goals – to reduce greenhouse gas intensity by 30%, reduce water usage intensity by 25% and reduce solid waste sent to landfills by 90% by 2023.
The pandemic and all its subsequent challenges have added an extra burden to meeting those climate change goals.
“In the past year, we continued to face some of the toughest challenges in our history – navigating through a global pandemic, inflationary costs and persistent supply chain issues,” said Perdue Farms CEO Randy Day. “Our new reality reinforced the importance of operating in a way that supports the well-being of our associates and consumers who purchase our products, as well as the future of the shared planet we all call home.”
Perdue’s 2021 efforts resulted in
- Reduced solid waste sent to landfills by 11%,
- Reduced water usage intensity by 0.6%
- And increased greenhouse gas intensity by 0.1%.
As of the end of 2021, compared to a 2015 baseline, the company has in total reduced greenhouse gas intensity by 8.9%, reduced water usage intensity by 0.4% and reduced solid waste sent to landfills by 95.4%.
Waste management
One reason Perdue exceeded its waste management goal is all e-commerce shipping boxes are made of 100% recyclable cardboard and are lined with Green Cell Foam – a biodegradable, water soluble and backyard compostable foam from KTM Industries Inc. This initiative has kept more than 250,000 pounds of Styrofoam out of landfills.
Perdue pet treat brand, Spot Farms, has also agreed to donate 1% of the brand’s sales to grassland regeneration organization, Savory Institute, to expand regenerative sourcing solutions for meat, dairy, wool and leather.
