Environment
 It’s Good Business
 cKee Foods has long practiced environmentally friendly actions for both economic and ecological reasons.
Of course, the company meets or exceeds all federal, state, and local regulations regarding air, waste water, storm water, and hazardous waste. But we also take many voluntary actions to help the environment.
We know there’s no single solution to environmental problems, but we feel there are a number of things we can do to help, whether they’re big things, like building a recycling center, or little things, such as collecting aluminum cans in the breakrooms.
Volume Reduces Waste
McKee Foods begins by minimizing the amount of packaging we use while keeping quality and purity standards high. This helps decrease the volume of solid waste going into landfills.
Whenever possible, we buy ingredients in bulk. Most of our sugar, corn syrup, and flour arrive in railroad cars and tractor-trailers, helping reduce packaging waste.
We’re also phasing the use of some recycled materials into our operations.
Giving Waste a Second Chance
McKee Foods voluntarily recycles many different materials. We’ve built a recycling center inside one of our plants so we can recycle three grades of paper. Since we’ve had the center, that plant sends half the amount of waste to the landfill as before.
In a typical year, the following ingredients are recycled at our facility:
- 1,500 tons of cardboard.
- 180 tons of paper ingredient bags.
- 120 tons of mixed office paper and 60 tons of plastic.
We also recycle more than 200 tons of scrap steel and other metals per year,
plus used oil, solvent, wooden pallets, and plastic and metal drums.
Even small environmental steps really add up. For example, containers in our breakrooms collect nearly 2,000 pounds of used soft drink cans a year. Recycling the cans provides funds for local charities.
Even Food Scrap isn’t Wasted
McKee Foods sometimes has to discard products that don’t meet our specifications. Rather than throw the solid food scrap away, we recycle it to a food processor that uses it to produce animal feed. Each year we send out more than 1,500 tons of this food scrap. That’s a lot of landfill space saved and a lot of animals fed. |
