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Storefront: Saving Cardboard, Paper & Plastic

Each year, our goal is to improve our recycling practices.

We also make every effort to reduce our resource usage. In one case, by working with our supplier, we reduced 19,000 pounds of plastic by converting from a 2.5-gallon container of cleaning solution to a      1.5-gallon container of ultra-concentrated core cleaning and sanitation chemicals.

Here’s more about what we’ve recycled.

2017 Recycled Materials:

• 252,500 tons of cardboard
  
• 10,300 tons of mixed plastic
  
• 3,600 tons of waxed cardboard
  
• 4,200 tons of mixed paper

This equates to saving:

• 4.4 million trees
  
• 1.8 billion gallons of water
  
• 858,900 cubic yards of landfill space
  
• 2.8 million barrels of oil

OTHER WAYS WE’VE SAVED

Here are some other gains we’ve made by conserving resources:

We saved an impressive amount of paper by moving our reference materials to an electronic format for our stores. This switch enabled us to donate thousands of binders to local schools, churches, and other nonprofit organizations.

By working with our supplier, we eliminated 13,000 pounds of paper annually by reducing the amount of paper in our Bakery muffin cups by 23%.

We eliminated 7,900 pounds of corrugated cardboard annually by working with our supplier to reduce the size of the sidewalls on our Italian wedding cake trays.