Recently, I caught up with Reggie Nayar (pictured below), Senior Industry Manager of Sustainability and Recycling, who leads Frito-Lay's efforts to reduce landfill waste in our more than 30 manufacturing plants in the United States. Last March, I blogged about a nationwide landfill-reduction effort he launched at a few of our plants, and today I’d like to share his team’s progress.
The landfill-reduction program has proved to be a big success thanks to the efforts of many people across the company -- especially Reggie and the environmental coordinators at our plants. Last year, Frito-Lay reduced waste-to-landfills at our plants by more than 30 percent, and 14 of our plants now send less than 1 percent of waste to landfills. This is a big win for the environment and for Frito-Lay.
To realize these accomplishments, Reggie supported the environmental coordinators at Frito-Lay facilities, providing them with the tools they needed to reduce waste -- steps for getting started, on-going support and best practices sharing. For instance, Reggie developed a “roadmap for success” in which he assisted the sites with new equipment purchases, helped optimize material use and worked to remove obstacles so the plants could realize significant landfill-reduction goals.
Frito-Lay’s showed a real passion to reduce landfill waste. "The people working at our plants and distribution centers regularly tell me they're proud to be doing the right thing for the environment and for their kids' future,” Reggie told me. “They say that even their kids take pride in what Frito-Lay is doing to reduce landfill waste.”
In addition to the landfill-reduction initiatives, Frito-Lay continues its "upcycling" program, where we send used packaging film (chip bags) to TerraCycle, and the bags are converted into a variety of useful items -- placemats, aprons, trash cans, gym bags, pencil cases, lunch boxes and stereo speakers.
"My 8-year-old daughter, Alyssa, proudly wears her Terracycle backpack, made from Lay’s Dill Pickle bags, to school,” Reggie explained. “She also motivates us to do more recycling at home by using a small trash bin for waste and two big bins for recyclables.”
I'm glad to see that Reggie, our plants and Frito-Lay as a company have made solid progress to reduce landfill waste, and this year, we’re raising the stakes even more. Reggie’s goal is to achieve another 30 percent reduction in landfill waste at each of our plants. Plus, he's rolling out landfill-reduction programs with many of Frito-Lay's suppliers -- cardboard, seasonings and packaging film companies.
However, in my own home, I haven’t faired as well. Last year, I mentioned we were working to recycle more -- and that is coming along great. But I also mentioned that I was beginning to compost, and that hasn’t been as successful. All I really achieved through composting was attracting some very annoying little bugs to my yard. Clearly, I did something wrong. Maybe with Reggie’s help, I can give composting another try this spring.
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