The Dannon Company has cut its overall carbon footprint by 10 percent in 2009, according to the company's 2009 Corporate Social Responsibility Report. The food and beverage company has been named one of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's top green power partners this year for using the most renewable electricity.
The 2009 CSR report outlines Dannon's progress in nutrition and health, nature (including energy consumption, packaging and manufacturing), and people.
Here are some environmental highlights from the report. Dannon has purchased Green-e certified renewable energy credits (RECs) from Langdon Wind Center for an amount equivalent to the electricity it uses at all of its production facilities and headquarters.
In the area of packaging efficiency, Dannon has reduced the quantity of its primary packaging on a per ounce basis by 20 percent since 2004.
The company is working to receive most of its fresh milk from local milk producers close to its plants to reduce transportation emissions, and to increase the variety of products manufactured at each plant to cut the distance traveled to transport certain products to grocers.
The company also saves fuel and cuts emissions by producing some of its cups and bottles in close proximity to where they are filled.
In addition, 95 percent of its products are transported in wooden pallets, which are sourced from renewable, re-plantable and properly managed forests. The pallets also can be reused. The company ships more than 85 percent of its products via trucking companies that participate in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's SmartWay Transportation Program.
Dannon's largest yogurt plant in Minster, Ohio, touted as the largest in the United States, has initiated a waste water treatment strategy.
