The Turkey Hill experience has taken extensive manners towards a greater way of sustainability. The cooperation has gone head into the act of sustainability, by implementing the green initiatives including the act to drive out waste, reduce packaging, and reduce outputs to the environment. Reacting upon those statements, turkey hills core sustainability initiative is the Frey farm wind turbines that were installed in 2011 to partially supply the dairy with its annual electricity needs. These 135 foot turbines provide 6.2 million kWh annually, while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by about 5900 tons per year. Overall the main goal of the wind turbines is to provide energy diversification and reduced electrical costs.
By Michael Ward
Photoby Mike Ward
Steam Takeover
In addition to the farms wind turbines, they aren’t stopping there when it comes to sustaining energy. Heat is taken away from the large engines to produce reusable steam for the rest of the warehouse. The steam is piped directly to the dairy to make hot water for the cleaning, case washing, and pasteurization. While the steam is supplying up to 75 percent of the diary’s manufacturing needs, it is also starting to reduce in diesel fuel used by the company overall. Since the company started using steam to power their dairy machines, the use of diesel fuel has gone down by an estimated 150,000 gallons per year. Not to mention Turkey hill partners with LCSWMA (Lancaster county solid waste management authority), but they also are very associated with their partners PPL Renewable energy.
Lighting up the Hills
The plus of having an electric company as one of your partners shows that, extensive manners towards sustainably are being made and Turkey Hill is working hard to keep the country and world clean. But their green initiatives do not stop there, lighting is the next step and possibly one of the more important ones. Turkey Hill went through a mass lighting change in mainly all of their warehouses. Overall, they replaced nearly all t-12 Fluorescent lights with the higher efficient T-8 lights and nearly all metal halides and high-pressure sodium fixtures. To go along with that 530 fixtures were converted to energy saving t-5 fluorescents, which are located in the ice cream and fluid production for the refrigerated areas. As a result of this lighting massacre the annual operating cost with be diminished grossly, extended lamp life cycles, overall power maintenance cost and a reduced heat in the warehouse from the change in lightbulbs.
Photo by Mike Ward
Recycling in the Warehouse
When it comes to recycling terms turkey hill is by all means high up on the leader boards. Turkey hill actively have their major recycling programs in action including, Cardboard, HDPE and LDPE plastics. The action to take plastic and cardboard out partially is a great movement to sustaining the country. Records have shown that turkey hill in the past three years recycled over 1,500 tons of plastic and cardboard products. Cardboards was the most recycled in the past three years with turkey hill raking in over 900 ton of recycled cardboard. The sustainability section of turkey hill including their green initiative process is changing the county of Lancaster in more ways than none. The process of reusing energy is very difficult to pull of, let alone get the whole process started. To change a company out of its old manufacturing ways is very hard but to do it with such proficiency like turkey hill did is practically mind Blowing
Photo by Turkey Hill
Photo by Gettle Fire security