Rice Fruit’s sustainable efforts add up over time
Many sustainable changes and choices save businesses money.
Other changes require an upfront investment that may be hard to swallow, especially during this economic crisis and the coronavirus pandemic.
But often the costs will decrease or your business can reap financial savings in the long term, said Brenda Briggs, vice president of sales and marketing at Rice Fruit Co., Gardners, Pa.
Other times, you do it because it’s the right thing to do, she said.
“Rice Fruit is adding sustainable packaging options that are available and new today, which often are more costly to implement, but in time, as the industry makes moves and more people make these packaging choices, the costs will come down. That’s the normal cycle of how things work,” Briggs said.
As the fall apple season ramps up, Rice Fruit will have a new tote bag for retail and farmers markets, which is 100% recyclable as always, but there’s now a label made of the same material as the bag.
“Matching up the materials of like product simplifies the process. You don’t have to separate them to remove the label or do extra steps at the recycling center that consumers might or might not be aware of,” Briggs said.
“Of course, it comes at a cost, but we think it is worthwhile.”
Also, the company has taken several actions the past couple of years at its facility to reduce its carbon footprint.
Rice Fruit has made huge strides.
In 2018, the company installed on the roof of a controlled atmosphere storage building a 130-kilowatt DC solar array.
A solar array is a collection of multiple solar panels that generate electricity in DC form, converting it to AC form, which makes it usable for a building’s electrical outlets. For perspective, a 5-kilowatt array can power a typical household for a day.
Also, the company signed up for a Green/Renewable Energy Initiative addendum with its electricity supplier, which ensures that a 100% equivalent of its annual consumption is renewably generated.
That contract costs more than the standard electrical rate, Briggs said.
However, the company gets a break: Almost half of the cost of the solar array was covered by a grant of $140,000 from the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Financing Authority and Pennsylvania Office of Economic and Community Development.
Rice Fruit also has reduced its average electric lighting consumption annually by 75%, she said, by transitioning all facilities to LED lighting.
“We’ve been working on this several years. Each year we convert or upgrade several 100 fixtures,” Briggs said.
The company continues to install variable frequency drives that reduce the average consumption of packing machinery.
In 2020, the company deployed more than 40 drives over packing lines and machinery to help drive down electrical consumption.
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