Enviro-Stewards recently completed a multimedia Pollution Prevention (P2) and Energy Efficiency (E2) Assessment of Chudleigh’s Ltd.’s production facility located in Milton, Ontario.  Chudleigh’s is a privately-owned commercial bakery that sells its products domestically and internationally.  The results of the assessment are now available through a public case study published by the Toronto Region Sustainability Program (TRSP), who co-funded the P2 portion of the project.  A PDF of the case study can be downloaded from the TRSP website here.

Enviro-Stewards was subsequently retained by Chudleigh’s to assist them in completing Walmart’s Supplier Sustainability Assessment, which involved calculating and reporting the facility’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP).

Highlights of the P2 & E2 assessment include:

• $15,000/year in potential savings by diverting peels & juice from sanitary sewer
• $23,000/year in potential savings by sending organic waste directly to compost or animal feed
• $21,000/year saved by repairing malfunctioning microwave cooling water valve
• Refer to case study for additional results

Enviro-Stewards’ founder has been contributing to PepsiCo Foods’ journey to Net Zero through Engineering Design Summits.  On June 24, 2011, Enviro-Stewards hosted Frito Lay Cambridge’s Net Zero Water Strategy Team in their new Boardroom.

“We at PepsiCo Foods Canada held Engineering design Summits at the University of Waterloo Campus in the summer of 2009 and spring of 2011 with the goal of advancing Sustainability Engineering for its facilities and processes to a goal that we call “Net Zero”.

We were grateful to have the participation of Bruce Taylor and Enviro Stewards (along with other select industry experts) who are creative out of the box thinkers that we will continue to work with as we work towards this bold goal in the future.

Bruce and Enviro Stewards have impressed us with their engineering expertise in many areas including water conservation and process water treatment methods and systems.”

- Helmi Ansari, Director Sustainability and Productivity, PepsiCo Foods Canada

Enviro-Stewards’ office is located in a renovated 100 year old Furniture factory in Elmira, Ontario.  During 2011, our staff grew by more than 25% and additional floorspace became available to us.  This space includes a new boardroom with sustainable design features such as:

• Conference Table by Calstone – 0% to Landfill Guarantee
• A lighting retrofit to reduce total fixture amp draw by 50%
• Daylighting by independently switching the bank of lights adjacent to the window
• Upgraded windows and reuse of the original exterior (single pane) windows as interior windows to permit daylighting of the interior side of the board room

Frito Lay Cambridge Net Zero Water Strategy Session Participants:

Helmi Ansari, Director Sustainability and Productivity

Ryan Verschuere, Sustainability Intern

Bruce Taylor, President, Enviro-Stewards

Ryan Merrick, Sustainability Resource

The Sustainability Applied 2011 conference recently took place in Windsor, Ontario, from June 9th to 10th.  During the conference, Enviro-Stewards had the honour of providing a Sustainability Credit to six of the conference attendees, including the June 9th Gala’s three keynote speakers.  Each Sustainability Credit purchases a locally-constructed BioSand filter in South Sudan that will provide at least 20,000 litres per year of safe drinking water to South Sudanese families and communities and avoid at least 3 tonnes of Greenhouse Gas emissions (and deforestation) that would otherwise be needed to boil a portion of this water to make it safe to drink.

The recipients of the Sustainability Credits were:

The Honourable John Wilkinson, Minister of the Environment

Andrew Bowerbank, Chairman, EC3 Initiative

Nadine Gudz, Director, Sustainability Strategy, InterfaceFLOR

Bob Willard, Speaker, and Author of Resources for Sustainability Champions\

Cam Metcalf, Executive Director, Kentucky Pollution Prevention Center

Mario Sonego, Engineer and Corporate Leader for Environmental Protection and Transportation, City of Windsor

Above photo (left to right):  The Honourable John Wilkinson (Minister of the Environment), Bruce Taylor (President, Enviro-Stewards), Kevin Jones (President & CEO, BLOOM)

Above photo (left to right):  Bruce Taylor (President, Enviro-Stewards), Bob Willard (Speaker & Author)

On May 12, 2011, the Wines & Vines website featured Tantalus Vineyards, an Enviro-Stewards client, in their Latest News: Top Stories section (article).

The feature, entitled, “B.C. Winery Ferments Water”, discusses Tantalus Vineyards’ innovative sequencing batch reactor (SBR) wastewater treatment plant (WWTP).  Enviro-Stewards designed and helped commission process (clean) water treatment, wastewater treatment & reuse, and an air treatment “biofilter” to avoid odours at Tantalus’ winery.

Prior to the design of the WWTP, Enviro-Stewards lead a resource-conservation assessment to reduce upstream organic loading and water use.  The reduction in organic loading and water usage resulting from the assessment allowed for a much smaller WWTP, which realized over $50,000 in capital cost savings as well as significantly reducing the footprint of the system.  Click on the graphic below to read the case study for this project.

On Thursday, May 5 2011, Bruce Taylor of Enviro-Stewards was a featured presenter at the 2011 Guelph Water Smart Business Workshop.

The Water Smart Workshop was intended to encourage water use efficiency among local businesses.  Mr. Taylor’s presentation was entitled, “Water Conservation in the ICI Sector: Bottom Line & Top Line Gains through Integrated Water Conservation”.  A PDF copy of Mr. Taylor’s presentation can be downloaded from the City of Guelph’s website or by clicking the graphic below.

Tim Hortons recently published its 2010 Sustainability and Responsibility Report.  Page 66 of the report features implemented gains secured by Fruition Fruit & Fills (a division of Tim Hortons) since 2008.

As noted in a previous blog entry, the Fruition project was also featured in the Spring 2011 edition of Impact Magazine.  As illustrated in the footprint per unit of production chart below, since 2007 the facility has reduced:

• Organic discharges by 88%
• Greenhouse gas emissions by about 30%
• electricity by 31%,
• natural gas by 26%,
• wastewater discharge by 75%, and
• solid waste to landfill by 82%.

Enviro-Stewards has been assisting Fruition Fruit & Fills (a division of Tim Hortons) to identify, justify and implement measures to improve the sustainability of Fruition’s production processes.  As outlined in the linked advertorial, from 2007 to 2010, sustainability improvements (on a per unit of production basis) were as follows:

Economically

The facility is saving approximately $490,000 per year in energy, water, ingredients, surcharge and landfill fees.  Efficiency improvements have also eliminated the need for an expensive end-of-pipe treatment system for pH and Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) removal.

Environmentally

The facility has reduced Greenhouse gas emissions by about 30%, electricity by 31%, natural gas by 26%, wastewater discharge by 75%, organic discharges to sewer by 88%, and solid waste to landfill by 82%.

Socially

Efficiency improvements have reduced worker exposure to ingredient dust and wastewater neutralization chemicals.  Also, ingredient pails were used to help launch a solar mango drying project in South Sudan and the facility purchased 40 biosand filters in South Sudan that are providing 800,000 litres per year of safe drinking water and avoiding more than 120 tonnes of carbon emissions.

Click on the graphic below to view a high-resolution PDF version:

Enviro-Stewards was recently featured in the first in a series of reports aimed at helping leaders of Canadian organizations to better understand and benefit from the risk and opportunities presented by the environmental sustainability challenge.  This Manufacturing 2011 Report is the product of a collaboration between the Royal Bank and Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters (CME).

Enviro-Stewards’ pollution prevention work at Trimac Transportation was featured in a case study relevant to Ontario’s new toxics reduction act (Page 13 of report).

In discussing areas of opportunity and lost value, Enviro-Stewards’ President, Bruce Taylor, P.Eng., was quoted as saying:

Most manufacturers only account for the cost of disposing of material or complying with a regulation, buty they also need to take it back tothe actual lost production value of the ingredient in the first place.  For example, in the food and beverage industry, manufacturers recognize the thousands of dollars worth of surcharges they may have to pay to their local municipality to destroy organics in the sewer treatment system, but they routinely ignore the lost production value of that material.  “it might cost you a half a cent per kilogram to destroy the material, but it costs you a buck or two a kilogram to buy it and then flush it down the drain.”

As outlined in the article, Veriform’s internal initiatives succeeded in reducing their heating bill by 91%.  Veriform subsequently retained Enviro-Stewards to assess the performance of Veriform`s downdraft cutting table, which they operate onsite and also sell under the product name VeriCUT.

Enviro-Stewards` assessment identified practical opportunities to reduce the cutting table`s energy consumption by 90% with a 2.3 year payback (43% return on investment).  These changes will also provide market advantage for the VeriCUT downdraft table product as it will be less expensive to operate, have a smaller environmental footprint and reduce worker and community exposure to dust emissions (i.e. improved economic, environmental, and social sustainability).

Enviro-Stewards recently had the honour of presenting the GFTC’s most prestigious award, recognition for Corporate Social Responsibility – overall recognition in all three sustainability categories (environmental, economic and social) – to Petra Cooper, president of Fifth Town Artisan Cheese Co.  The gala celebrated leadership in sustainability in the Canadian food & beverage industry.  More information on the gala, including a list of other award winners and photographs from the evening can be found on the Raising the Bar website.