P&G’s first wind turbine worldwide

At an official inauguration ceremony at the end of January, the P&G management together with local authorities pressed the red button putting into operation its first wind turbine worldwide. Feed-ing into the public grid, the Coe-vorden turbine will generate the equivalent of a third of the plant’s annual electricity consumption or 17 per cent of its total energy consumption. € 3.5 mio invested The turbine is estimated to produce approximately 5 500 megawatt hours of energy per year, enough to power 1 500 households in the Netherlands. P&G has invested € 3.5 mio in the wind turbine, which is 100 m in height. The consumer goods group has been interested in the topic of sustainability for many years, and brought out its first environmental safety publication back in 1956. P&G has had a sustainability de-partment and has produced reports on this subject since 1999. The idea of a wind turbine for the Coevorden plant was conceived in 2008, when energy costs were at an all-time high. Significantly increasing the use of renewable energy in its plants is one of P&G’s 2020 environmental goals. The company only recently stipulated these in the course of announcing a new long-term environmental sustainability vision. P&G is striving to switch to the use of renewable energy in its other pet food plants too in the future. The environmental sustainability goals that it is aspiring to by 2020 also include a reduction of 20 per cent in truck transportation and a reduction in manufacturing waste to 0.5 per cent (disposed). To enable the company to track progress against this vision, P&G will implement a series of 10-year sustainability goals. “Innovation and external partnerships are key components of a successful sustainability program. No one company can do it alone. It is important for companies to collaborate with external partners to tackle important topics that impact both our world and our businesses,” said Len Sauers, P&G vice-president of global sustainability, at the inauguration ceremony. The plant at Coevorden is a pioneer. In the plant P&G produces 160 000 tonnes of dry pet food products a year for the “Eukanuba” and “Iams” brands. This equates to 20 per cent of its global business and is broken down into 94 formulates, 499 SKUs (378 for dogs and 121 for cats) and 35 different bag sizes. Nearly 440 tonnes of dog and cat food is pro-duced daily in the plant, enough to feed 24 million pets, according to P&G. Coevorden is…