Environmental Action
Leaving the land, air and water better than we found it.
Moving Mountains (Of Waste)
We remain committed to our goal of zero waste to landfill certification by 2030, as defined by TRUE Zero Waste protocols. We’re proud to report that 66% of our total waste was kept out of landfills this year, up from 51% in 2024. While this number is thanks to dozens of individual efforts, we wanted to highlight three major initiatives.
This year, members of our Boardman facility relaunched a cheese scrap diversion project, keeping an additional 1,000,000 lbs of scrap out of the landfill, instead diverting it for use as animal feed.
Our new Decatur plant gave us a unique opportunity to implement diversion strategies from day one. Since opening, we’ve set up partnerships to divert 100% of unsellable product that didn’t meet our standard for uncompromising quality away from the landfill.
Getting unsellable food out of its packaging is a surprisingly complicated process, especially in large quantities. Recent advances in depackaging equipment have allowed us to partner with companies like 101 Inc. to keep virtually all of our packaged product waste out of the landfill — nearly 300,000 lbs.
Reducing our Resource Use
Pop quiz: How many kilowatt-hours does it take to power your home? Swipe through the cards to put our resource savings into context.
Taking the Reins of Change
We know sustainability efforts can come from anyone, at any time. Our Continuous Improvement Accelerator (CIA) program empowers our employees to get creative in reducing waste and improving efficiency in their day-to-day duties. Across all our TCCA facilities, 64 team members — from sanitation specialists to ice cream operators — have joined the program. Programs range from small tweaks to reduce wasteful use of cocoa powder and ice cream mix to larger initiatives like creating a salt tote recycling program. To date, our team members have already completed eight CIA projects with positive environmental benefits, with more in process!
