2005 RedBear's - all over the cities hunt

Ben & Jerry’s Environmental Performance – History & Highlights

1978

The first Ben & Jerry's scoop shop opens in a renovated gas station in Burlington, VT. It's renovated by Ben, Jerry, & their friends, with an innovative hodgepodge of reused, refurbished, secondhand, and non-standard materials, such as scrap sheets of aluminum (from the local newspaper) which they used to patch the building's leaky roof.

1985

Ben & JerryÂ’s begins building its ice cream manufacturing plant and company headquarters on Route 100 in Waterbury, Vermont. Facing all kinds of fun cost overruns and start-up delays, General Manager Chico Lager institutes cost-cutting measures imbued with his unique - and eventually highly prized - "Cheapo" sense of thrift and frugality. Although motivated, at the time, by financial rather than environmental considerations, many of his "just say 'no' to waste" policies (the banning of sticky-notes, the rationing of new pencils only to those whose old pencils he deemed stubby enough, etc.) set the stage for our early environmental conservation efforts.

1987

Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is a terrible thing to waste – but too much waste ice cream is even worse. To avoid exceeding the wastewater discharge limits set for us by the Village of Waterbury's sewage treatment plant, we begin supplying a pig farm in Stowe, Vermont, with ice cream waste; the pigs go hog-wild over all flavors except Mint with Oreo® Cookie (Actually, they like the cookies just fine; it’s the mint they can’t stand.). The story gets national attention, which we celebrate by printing up a limited edition tee-shirt featuring holstein-spotted pigs and a "Vermont's Swinest" caption.

1988

Ben & JerryÂ’s introduces the companyÂ’s 3-part Mission Statement, which inspires a number of already-environmentally-conscious employees to begin developing the framework for a companywide environmental program.

Early environmental program development begins with data collection - which begins, literally, in the company dumpsters. Although admittedly not the most scientific approach to solid waste measurement, our "dumpster watching" efforts yield almost immediate insight into the sizable volume of trash the company generates. We target 3 key types of trash to tackle - plastic, paper, & cardboard - each with its own unique set of challenges.

Plastic: We begin sending all of our plastic ingredients buckets to Vermont Republic Industries (VRI) to be reused or recycled. VRI employs people with developmental disabilities.

Cardboard: The production crew purchases a baler to recycle production cardboard, and we find paper brokers willing to arrange pick–ups to ease pressure on the company's limited warehouse storage space. In the first year alone, the project saves the company more than $17,000 in hauling and landfilling costs.

1989

The first Ben & JerryÂ’s Green Team is born. The employee-led groupÂ’s primary goal is to foster environmental awareness, education, and action throughout the company. From info-postings & other employee communications to entertaining & often offbeat environmental awareness events, the Green Team creates & facilitates fun ways to keep folks on the upside of the eco-learning curve.

Paper: To facilitate paper recycling, we set up a convenient system for separating white and mixed office paper, as well as newsprint, paperboard, and glossy paper. All desks and work spaces are equipped with recycling containers (our own plastic ingredients–buckets just happen to be perfect for this purpose!) for the various paper products, and employees are responsible for making sure the contents of their containers end up in central collection bins at office and plant sites. The separated waste types are picked up by a local recycler, who then provides us with data about the volume amounts we recycle. We in turn use the data as a baseline from which to plan ways to reduce that waste volume.

Ben & JerryÂ’s comes out against recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH), based on concern about its adverse economic impact on family farming.

We complete our first wastewater pre-treatment "lagoon" system at the Waterbury factory, which helps reduce the levels of high-strength dairy and associated production wastewater prior to discharge to the Village of Waterbury's municipal sewage treatment system.

1990

Instead of using paper brokers to haul away the thousands of carboard boxes we accumulate, we begin selling bales of cardboard to ReBox Corporation, a company that helps "close the loop," with their unique carboard-reuse solution, one that soon has us realizing both the environmental and economical benefits of reusing cardboard rather than recycling it.

Ben & Jerry's protests New Hampshire's Seabrook nuclear power plant with a Boston billboard declaring, "Stop Seabrook. Keep our customers alive and licking."

1991

Ben & Jerry's, in conjunction with seventeen other companies, launches a congressional postcard–writing campai

heh

Such a good come back did you need help to think that one up.

This hunt was over in like November wasn't it??

who are you talking to? I haven't seen anything to come back at?

you know.. this stuff is one of the reasons I wasn't too big on paying to post. I get/hear enough drama in my real life, I really don't need to pay to see more of it.

I still enjoy the forums and having discussions, and I'm not pointing any fingers at anyone. I just want to let people know that when I run across similar discussions in the future, I won't be reading them. So if something involves me, just egram me. I guess I just prefer to get along with everyone and hope everyone gets along with me.

I'm sorry for this post, and hope no one thinks the less of me for bringing it up (I hope it's in accordance with the code of conduct, I don't want to step on any toes). It will be the only one I ever make in similarly styled discussions. I just thought I'd let people know where I stand.

 :pbpt: