Organic Processing Vo1.5 #3

While organic suppliers, farmers and processors have long
been leaders in forging a better path
toward environmental sustainability—
reducing the use of harmful chemicals
and improving resource management—
many other important efforts have
become part of the global consciousness
including everything from waste reduction
to energy and water conservation.
All these different aspects of sustainability
have begun to merge into expectations from
customers, activists and government regula-
tors, who are holding businesses to higher
standards. While today, most of these stakehold-
ers assume that a certified organic supplier is doing
good, tomorrow the expectation is that they
will have to show that they are doing good
across the sustainability spectrum.
Product Life Cycles: Looking at Every Step Within
The Big Environmental Picture
Organic processors already use more sustain-
ably grown ingredients, however, there are many
other environmental elements to address when creating,
marketing and distributing a product.
Is your manufacturing facility and office building
conserving as much energy as possible? What about
the carbon footprint of your transportation? And, what
happens to the product (including the packaging) at
the end of its usefulness?