By Carlos Fernandez, EVP Customer Sustainability & Market Development
At JBT Corporation, we are committed to reducing our environmental impact and promoting sustainable practices across all our operations. Sustainability is a work in progress, and it is in our DNA.
While the majority of our impact lies within the solutions offered to our customers, our commitment to environmental responsibility extends to our operations. We strive for our facilities to operate efficiently and safely, much like the solutions we provide to our customers.
Reflecting on our accomplishments last year, we made considerable progress in our sustainability efforts. We have manufacturing facilities, Food Technology Centers, and offices across six continents and more than 25 countries, and across all of them, our collective focus on relentless continuous improvement has served us well in our efforts to reduce the environmental impact of our operations. In this blog you can read a few examples of initiatives our sites have implemented or are in the process of implementing.
JBT site goes Green!
One of the major initiatives we implemented at our Helsingborg, Sweden facility was the transition to electric vehicles. We introduced a green pool car, installed charging stations for electric and hybrid cars across several of our office parking lots, and even replaced some car commuting between the office and workshop with electric bikes.
We also participated in an Energy Demand Response program at our Kingston, New York facility, which provided payments to large energy consumers that agreed to reduce their energy demand during times of electricity grid stress. Our participation resulted in a capacity performance of 114%, keeping energy and prices low in the community. Payments earned from this program were then reinvested into better energy management software tools and services designed to reduce costs and improve operational performance.
We also made significant changes to our lighting systems at several sites, installing various LED fittings within our facilities. This not only resulted in a longer lifespan for our lights but also improved energy efficiency, environmental performance, and waste handling.
We also improved our waste handling by installing a site compactor at our Livingston, United Kingdom facility to replace smaller skips and bins, reducing the amount of collection from the site, and therefore reducing the number of time trucks needed to attend the site and carbon emissions from diesel trucks on the road.
Reduced printing with digital sales collateral sharing platform
In addition, we reduced printing altogether by implementing a digital sales collateral sharing platform, eliminating waste, saving trees, and reducing paper production, printer inks, and non-biodegradable plastic casing. We also scheduled paper record shredding for recycling, saving 584 trees since the initiative was implemented in January 2022 and eliminating over 100 cubic yards of landfill space.
We also localized our efforts, minimizing freight emissions by making our German Glinde site self-sufficient in clip production, mitigating the rush air freight and overall sea freight from our US Apex, North Carolina production site.
Finally, we replaced old and outdated boiler with an efficient one, resulting in a predicted 28% energy saving and better local controls for altering supply temperature, which resulted in less gas being used and a reduction in supply bills at our Livingston, United Kingdom facility.
JBT Employees supports with CSR activities
In addition to our sustainability efforts, the Protein team at JBT Corporation also places a strong emphasis on corporate social responsibility (CSR). Our CSR Steering team was put in place in APAC in 2022, and we have planned and executed activities in China, Thailand, and Singapore. These activities were focused on community engagement, employee volunteerism, and environmental stewardship.
One of our notable CSR initiatives was an organized wildlife conservation event in Thailand, in which our employees volunteered their time to plant trees and install salt licks for local wildlife in a local forest reserve.
Our CSR activities not only benefit the communities in which we operate, but they also align with our company’s values and mission to be a responsible corporate citizen. We will continue to engage in meaningful CSR activities and partnerships to positively impact society and the environment.
Significant steps
As the Executive Vice President of Customer Sustainability and Market Development, I am extremely proud of the progress we have made as a team in our sustainability journey. We have taken significant steps to reduce the environmental impact of our operations, from transitioning to electric vehicles, to improving our waste handling, to reducing our energy consumption through efficient boilers.
I am excited to continue to implement sustainable practices and initiatives in the coming year. We will continue to strive for continuous improvement in our operations and to engage in meaningful CSR activities that positively impact society and the environment. Our commitment to sustainability is not only the right thing to do, but it also helps us to create long-term value for our stakeholders and the communities in which we operate. We will continue to work together to make JBT Corporation a leader in sustainability and corporate social responsibility.
