House General Government Council
House Natural Resources Appropriations Committee
House Agriculture & Natural Resources Committee

Presentation – Thursday, January 14, 2010:

Good morning – my name is Keyna Cory and I am the lobbyist for Associated Industries of Florida new Environmental Sustainability Council.  I am pitch hitting for our Chair, Michelle Bellaire of Walmart who unfortunately could not attend today’s meeting.  Also Doug Mann, A. Duda & sons is our Vice Chair and will be helping us with water issues that I am sure will come before the Council and Committees at a later time. 

Environmental issues have always been important to AIF members.  Florida’s natural resources are a draw not only for tourists, but for businesses who would like to locate in our state.  You have heard me say it before; it is hard to recruit companies to a dirty state.  We must be good stewards of our land and water, and AIF and our members lead the way in its protection. 

The AIF Environmental Sustainability Council believes more can be done to reduce waste, reuse materials, increase recycling, and divert waste from our landfills.   Not only will this help extend the life of our landfills, but by creating markets for recyclables and beneficial reuse of key materials these efforts should help Florida’s economy.  

In January 2009, AIF created a Recycling Task Force to discuss ways to improve reduction, reuse and recycling efforts in Florida.  Many of our members have already implemented innovative and effective programs to manage their waste.  You will hear some of their stories today. 

We want to thank Mary Jean Yon and DEP, especially Ron Henricks and Raoul Clarke, for the time they have spent meeting with our Council and discussing their report and listening to our ideas.  They had a very difficult task of creating a plan to increase Florida’s recycling rate to 75% by 2020.  The Council agrees with many of the report’s recommendations. 

We are glad to see emphasis placed on creating markets for recyclables.  Not only will this help recycling programs but should help create jobs.  We believe the new partnership between Enterprise Florida and DEP on identifying key recycling companies and recruiting them to Florida is very important.

Education is also important.  Many of our Council members volunteer at their local schools giving presentations on what and how to reduce; reuse and recycle waste products. 

Now let’s talk about what Florida companies are doing to reduce waste; reuse beneficial materials and recycle and none of the programs are mandated by law.  Examples will include sustainability efforts at Walmart and PepsiCo; recycling programs by Hewlett-Packard; Nestle Water North America reduction in packaging efforts; AT&T’s successful “Cell Phones for Soldiers” and the Florida Beverage Association recycling programs.  Let’s start with Walmart.

Wal-Mart –
I could not resist on showing this video – “The Secret Life of a Walmart Deli Pizza Box.”

Walmart has the philosophy that an efficient and profitable business goes hand-in-hand with being a good steward of the environment.  One of Walmart’s company wide sustainability goals is to send zero waste to landfills by 2025.

Between February 2008 and January 2009 Walmart redirected more than 57% of the waste generated by their stores and Sam’s Club facilities.

Walmart operations around the world are recycling millions of pounds of materials from their stores.  They have a new process called a super sandwich bale where they can take cardboard on each end and place aluminum cans, plastic hangers, plastic bottles, loose plastic wrap, cardboard, office paper and paperback books allowing the best way for them to recycle 32 items.

The Walmart bags are famous and show their customers the environmental benefits of reusable bags.

There is a hand-out in your books that give actual numbers on their sustainability efforts.  Go to their website for more information – they have a number of initiatives that you will find very interesting.

Hewlett-Packard  
HP provides inventive, high quality printing supplies and takes the environment into consideration at every stage of the lifecycle – from the very first stages of product design through manufacturing, distribution, customer use and recycling.

HP has developed an unprecedented, closed-loop plastic recycling system that incorporates post-consumer recycled plastics – from sources such as water bottles and HP inkjet cartridges – into the manufacture of new original HP inkjet print cartridges.

Over 15 years ago, HP’s industry-leading Plant Partners recycling program was created to make it easy to recycle HP print cartridges, printers and other technology products responsibly.  With operations in over 50 countries, HP has, to date, recycled 1 billion cumulative pounds of electronics and HP print cartridges, with a goal of doubling its annual recovery rate to reach 2 billion pounds by 2010.

As part of HP commitment to recycling, HP offers PurchasEdge points for recycling HP print cartridges, which may be redeemed for free HP products.

HP’s Design for Environment program was established in 1992.  The program is implemented by environmental professionals, known as product stewards, who participate on every HP print cartridge design team.  Product stewards ensure environmental design goals are integrated into every product design, measuring HP print cartridges’ performance in such areas as material efficiency, ease of recycling, packaging efficiency, and reducing environment impact.

And remember …

“Hit Print Responsibly”

Nestle Waters North America

Nestle Waters North America’s innovative 3 liter stackable bottle has the capability to reduce secondary packaging to almost nothing.

Over the past 15 years, Nestle Waters North America has reduced the amount of PET plastic in its bottles by 48%.  This reduction has resulted in the avoidance of using 260 million pounds of plastic.  They have also reduced the size of its paper labels since 1998 saving nearly 20 million pounds of paper, or the equivalent of 25,000 trees to date!

Nestle Waters North America’s Eco-Shape bottle is 12.5 grams (on average) of plastic, which is 15% less plastic than their lightest container. Since introducing Eco-Shape in 2007, Nestle Waters North America estimates that it will save more than 195 million pounds of resin and help avoid more thank 365,000 MT CO2e emissions through the end of 2009.  What does this mean?  It is the equivalent of taking 78,000 cars off the road for an entire year!

Shrink wrapping for ½ litter cases has been reduced by 14% over the last 3 years and eliminated 35.3 million lbs of corrugated cardboard from packaging in the last 10 years. 

Nestle Waters North America has two plants in Florida.  The Zephyrhills plant has over a 95% recycling rate and the Madison plant has a 90% recycling rate of non-product materials at its facility. 

In May 2009, Nestle Waters North America teamed up with Keep America Beautiful to provide $10,000 “Recycle On The Go” grants to 12 KAB affiliates in an effort to encourage and empower local communities to make away-from-home recycling more convenient.

They teamed up with Whole Food Market, and for every plastic beverage container that is recycled at a Whole Food Market store in a re-source recycling station during the next 12 months, Nestle Waters North America will make a 5 cent donation to Keep America Beautiful to support local recycling programs across the country!

And again, these efforts were done without any mandates!

PepsiCo
PepsiCo products include naturally Pepsi, Frito Lay, Tropicana, Quaker Oats and Gatorade.  It is PepsiCo’s goal to design and develop packaging systems that are environmentally responsible throughout its entire life cycle.

For example – did you know that they have reduced the amount of plastic used in their most popular Aquafina bottle since 2002 saving 75 million pounds of plastic annually?

They are using responsible materials for their products.  For example the new Naked all natural protein juice smoothe uses “sustainably grown” rainforest alliance certified bananas.

PepsiCo is using 100% post consumer recycled plastic bottles – see the label on the Naked Juice product showing how they are using bottles to make bottles and encouraging their customers to recycle.

Their Frito Lay division has been doing a tremendous job of diverting waste from landfills.

Again, using good business practices they have implemented the process where route sales employees return empty cartons from stores to their plants for reuse or recycling and delivery boxes are used on an average of 6 to 7 times.  Not only does this save the company money but it saves nearly 5 million trees a year and keeps 56 million pounds of cardboard away from landfills.

The Frito Lay’s Orlando plant is testing zero landfill concept defined as reducing landfill waste to less than 1% of waste generated.  They have cut landfill waste by 50% in 2009.

AT&T
AT&T has created a program to recycle wireless phones, Smartphones, batteries and accessories.   According to USEPA of the 2.25 million tons of TVs, cell phones and computer products that can be recycled, only 18% was collected for recycling and 82 percent was disposed of, primarily in landfills.  While wireless phones are just a small portion of the overall e-waste, AT&T created a program to make recycling easy and accessible to everyone.

So how does this work?  Though AT&T Reuse & Recycling program, consumers are invited to bring unwanted wireless phones, Smartphones, batteries and accessories regardless of manufacturer or carrier to AT&T company-owned retail stores for recycling.  You can find locations on their website.

AT&T has a long standing history of supporting Cell Phones for Soldiers – an initiative that uses funds from recycled cell phones to buy prepaid phone cards for active duty military members to help them stay connected with their families.  So far they have raised more than $1 million and distributed more than 75,000 prepaid phone cards to soldiers overseas.

They make it east for customers to participate – you can drop off your old cell phone at one of the many AT&T owned wireless store locations or you can download a postage-paid mailing label and mail your phone directly.  No computer, no problem, just request a postage-paid mailing envelope to be mailed to your address.

Florida Beverage Association
Next we have a brief presentation by Martha Harbin and the Florida Beverage Association

Also AIF would like to thank Gene Jones and SWIX for being a part of our Council. 

We want to thank you for the time and allowing us to tell you about AIF Environmental Sustainability Council and a few success stories here in Florida.  There are many more to tell!    Many of these programs did not happen overnight but evolved overtime.  To steal a line from my friend Tim Center … just remember it took 100 years to put wheels on luggage!