Lipton's US plant achieves zero landfill

Lipton's US plant achieves zero landfill

The facility, which manufactures Lipton tea bags, pyramids, dry mix and to-go sticks, recycles about 70% of its waste. About 22% of that gets composted and the remaining 8% is converted into renewable energy at a local waste-to-energy plant. The Suffolk factory is Lipton's only tea processing plant in the US, and the largest of its kind in the country.

Home-grown success

But when it comes to what – or who – is powering Suffolk's success, the plant's manager, Ted Narozny is quite clear from where much of the inspiration originated: "Our employees were very much involved in the process."

Workers submitted their own ideas to help develop the plan to reach the 0% goal. Thanks to their suggestions, the factory has eliminated plastic strapping on pallets, replaced non-recyclable cleaning wipes with reusable rags and begun using sturdier, reusable, plastic pallets rather than traditional wooden ones.

"We have always had a good recycling programme, but we wanted to get to a great recycling programme," says Ted. "This is just one step further in Lipton's overall goal to be green from the leaf to the consumer's cup."

The savings at a glance

• 16 tons of plastic, which reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 13.76 tons

• 21,182 mature trees, the equivalent of 262 million sheets of newspaper

• 576,898 gallons of oil, enough to heat and cool 2,856 homes for a year

• 29,904 gallons of gasoline, enough to drive more than 837,000 miles in the average American car

• 8,722,000 gallons of water, enough to meet the daily fresh water needs of 116,293 Americans

• 5,108,600 kilowatt hours of electricity, or a year's supply of power for more than 425 average homes