Truly Green Tea

I may not be a huge tea fan (I'm partial to plain old hot water -- less caffeine), but I am a fan of companies doing what they can to be environmentally friendly. One such company is Lipton, one of the many units of London-based Unilever. I mention Unilever because, according to this GreenBiz article, it's "an environmental leader," including having helped initiate the Marine Stewardship Council (making sure fisheries are certified as sustainable), among other environmental initiatives.

And as I learned, the apple that is Lipton doesn't fall far from the Unilever tree. Apparently, back in 2007, Unilever said it would "buy all of its tea from sources that are certified as sustainable by a nonprofit called the Rainforest Alliance." Employees at Lipton's Suffolk, Va., plant heard about that and decided they wanted to improve their own recycling efforts. How serious were they? Enough so that, according to the article, "Teams of workers followed Lipton's garbage to a local landfill, and (yuck) picked it apart to see what was being thrown away."

That journey clearly left an impression, because the plant, which produces nearly a million tea bags per hour, is now a "zero waste operation." According to the article, about 70 percent of its waste is recycled, 22 percent is composted and the other 8 percent is incinerated, "providing steam for a U.S. Navy shipyard in nearby Portsmouth, along with electricity that is sold back to the grid."

And as more and more companies are learning, being environmentally friendly is also good for the bottom line. Plant manager Ted Narozny, as quoted in the article, said, "In round numbers, we're saving approximately $100,000 a year." And the company is turning those savings around, investing it in further efficiencies.

Commendable, indeed. And you have to wonder how many other companies would suddenly become more environmentally friendly if their employees followed their company's trash.