Going for Zero

Jim Twiggs estimates McKee Foods Corp. recycled about 90 percent of its waste in 2007, but a soft-spoken receiving supervisor named Danny Sites believed the company could do better.

Five years later, McKee recycles more than 98 percent of its waste, and now it’s Twiggs who is aiming even higher.

“We think that zero waste may be in our future,” he said.

The intensified approach to recycling is just part of amped-up efforts to improve the company’s sustainable practices. The results have included a dramatic decline in waste costs and a spike in recycling revenue.

In 2007, for example, McKee paid $400 three times a week to have its waste hauled from its Gentry facility. Last year, the trash was pulled just 14 times, period. It will be even less than that this year.

Additionally, replacing existing lighting with high-efficiency fixtures in 2011 resulted in savings of more than $165,000 in maintenance and electric bills. Likewise, efforts to conserve water have resulted in a 60 percent decline in usage — or about 1 million gallons per week — since 2004.

Another result, said Twiggs, who has become the leader of McKee’s “Green Team,” is that McKee’s plants in Tennessee and Virginia have followed the example put into place in Gentry. Both expect to achieve zero-landfill status within the next couple of years.

The Gentry plant reached that status on Oct. 1, thanks to a comprehensive plan followed by all of its employees. Twiggs said he met with 47 small groups before McKee’s new programs were put into place, and he heard one question — What took you so long? — at every single one of them.

“It took all 1,300 people working here to make it happen,” echoed Tim Broughton, vice president and general manager of the Gentry facility.

Twiggs credits the now-retired Sites for initiating the meeting that got the efforts under way, and said he’s leaned heavily on Bobby Fanning, Walmart director of solid waste and recycling.

“We’re considered a very green company in their eyes,” Twiggs said of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

McKee also has become of a good example of how companies can use sustainability to boost bottom lines. Twiggs said a couple of keys are to be patient and realize that even small measures add up over time.

“If you take care of the pennies, the dollars will come.”