Our Carbon Footprint

Besides efficiency measures, we are working to reduce our carbon footprint by harnessing the power of renewable resources onsite:

Biodiesel: FY ’08 was the first full year of operation for our new Waterbury biodiesel facility. By fueling our trucks with a blend of traditional diesel and biodiesel, we are able to cut our fleet’s greenhouse emissions by up to 20%. We have expanded biodiesel to other regional facilities as well and estimate that our use of biodiesel displaced over 5,660 gallons of petroleum in FY ’08, reducing our carbon footprint by 63 tons.
Solar: In FY ’08, we received a grant to install a 100kW solar array on the roof of our distribution center. This installation will help reduce demand and CO₂ emissions (as well as save money) because solar installations typically achieve maximum output on hot summer days when the VT grid is most heavily utilized. Click here to see the energy it is producing right now.
Carbon offsets: Since 2003, we have purchased renewable energy credits (RECs) from NativeEnergy, Inc. to offset for our carbon use — emissions from business operations, travel and employee commuting, and our delivery fleet. These RECs represent the environmental benefits from introducing new renewable energy sources to the grid, displacing dirtier fossil resources. In FY ’08, we purchased offsets representing over 36,000 short tons of greenhouse gas emissions — about 30,000 short tons to mitigate our estimated FY ’08 footprint and about 6,000 short tons to true up our offsets from prior years using improved estimation methods.
Additionally in FY ’08, we introduced Changing Climate Change, a new enterprise-wide initiative focused on climate change, and developed a new enterprise statement on climate change.