Creating a zero waste environment

One of our customers provides innovative packaging solutions and wanted to create an innovative and sustainable campus that aligns its company’s mission and vision with its internal 2020 sustainability goals.  

This multinational corporation operates in over 120 countries and employs 15,000 employees, who are dedicated to offering a safer and less wasteful food supply chain approach.  

Their 2020 sustainability goals focus on 3 pillars: reducing their footprint, re-imagining customer solutions, and benefiting society. As part of this sustainability focus, the customer wanted to design a campus and culture that was zero waste in mind.  

Their corporate office sits on a 32-acre campus site that includes three innovative buildings that total more than 400,000 square feet. The campus houses a contemporary office workplace, a customer engagement center and an innovation center. 

We supported them in their aim to create a zero waste campus and culture:  

• To reduce the organization’s overall waste footprint, we implemented a waste segregation system to encourage thoughtful waste disposal. 
• Prior to the campus opening, we conducted training sessions to educate the customer and their employees on proper disposal. 
• In addition, we thoughtfully planned out the location of waste containers to encourage employees, customers and visitors to think wisely about their waste disposal habits. 
• To ensure proper disposal of materials, we partnered with a waste system contractor to collect materials for recovery and recycling, and with a local company to compost food scraps and organic materials. 

Because of the innovative design of the campus and the sustainable features, the customer received three LEED Gold certifications (LEED – Leadership in Energy and Environment Design – certification is a building certification for best-in-class strategies and processes). In 2018, our customer’s campus achieved a 73% landfill diversion rate, compared to an industry average of 30%. We helped the customer’s sustainability programme reach a total cost savings of $210,028.74 while reducing carbon emissions by 902 tonnes.