Source: Susan Kelly, MEATINGPLACE, 4/20/18



Perdue Farms announced its “2022 Goals” to reduce greenhouse gases, water use and solid waste.

Perdue will commit to reducing greenhouse gases by 30 percent and potable water use by 25 percent. It will divert 90 percent of solid waste from landfills and achieve zero solid-waste certification for at least five facilities.

The company said its internal environmental scorecard has factored into management compensation.

“We’re already taking steps to reduce our environmental footprint, but our 2022 goals will significantly accelerate our progress,” Steve Levitsky, vice president of sustainability for Perdue, said in a press release.

The company’s history of environmental initiatives includes solar energy installations in Maryland and Delaware, a biogas project in Kentucky that uses methane from a wastewater lagoon to generate electricity and hot water, and a biomass-fueled cogeneration and boiler project in North Carolina. Perdue’s recently opened soybean crushing plant in Pennsylvania uses steam from an adjacent county waste-to-energy system, eliminating onsite fossil-fuel boilers.

Perdue has been providing farmers on the Delmarva Peninsula alternative uses for their poultry litter for 16 years. Last year, with a move to large-scale composting, that project expanded to include a broader range of byproducts from poultry production and processing.

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