Sysco Arkansas has gone “Green”

Sysco Arkansas is committed to saving our Environment. We are promoting environmentally responsible products and services aware that such items and actions will aid in safeguarding our environment for future generations. The results of our efforts are both rewarding and refreshing.

The future of our environment is important to Sysco Arkansas

Recycling

Currently we recycle plastic shrink wrap, cardboard and white paper. Our warehouse and delivery associates work hard to keep plastic and cardboard separated daily to be bailed and recycled. Our office associates have recycle bins for any white paper that does not need to be shredded. We have two bailers for our cardboard and plastic recycling which has resulted in some small revenue from the sell of these waste products and resulted in reduced dumpster fees. Below are the results for the calendar years of 2007 and 2008.

SYSCO Arkansas recycling savings for 2007 and 2008 – Total pounds 479,000 lbs cardboard, 110,000 lbs plastic and 20,000 lbs paper for a total of 609,000 lbs of recycled products. These coverts to 304 tons of recycled waste.

(1)    Ton of fiber saves:

• 17 trees
• 3 cubic yard of landfill space
• 4102 (kwh) electricity
• 60lbs of air pollution
• 7000 gallons of water

Sysco Arkansas saved: 5,168 trees; 912 cubic yards of landfill space; 1,247,008 (kwh) electricity which would power 614 homes for 1 month; enough reduction in emissions of air pollution equivalent to taking 660 cars off the road for a day; over 2 million gallons of water and unbelievably 3,344 barrels of oil used to make plastic.

Warehouse Energy Efficiency

Sysco Arkansas contracted with an energy consultant, Cascade Energy, for an audit in finding ways to reduce energy in our warehouse.

We replaced all of our warehouse lighting with a newer T8 fixture which uses 150 watts per fixture compared to the staggering 400 watts per fixture with the previous fixtures.

We replaced freezer and cooler doors with new energy efficient doors reducing cold air loss from those environments.

We changed the operating pressures on our refrigeration system, reducing our kilowatt energy usage.

We replaced dock door and warehouse openings with new seals and continue to replace as needed to prevent temperature loss.

Our energy efforts for 2007 and 2008 resulted in a reduction of 1,933,066 kilowatt hours of electricity.

Air Quality

Sysco Arkansas initiated XY routing reducing our miles 176,017 miles while replacing old inefficient equipment with new very efficient equipment which helped us reduce our diesel gallons 69,680 from July, 2007 thru June, 2009 from the prior two years. This equates into a savings of 266,609 grams of Carbon Dioxide from being dumped into the air.