Last week, PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay North America announced its Casa Grande facility in Arizona has reached “near net zero” as part of the company’s push for environmental sustainability; thanks in part to solar energy.
Frito-Lay may not be a familiar name with Australian consumers, but one of the company’s products certainly is – Doritos corn chips (made under license here by Smith’s Snackfood Company).
Frito-Lay set out to convert the existing production facility to be as off-grid as possible; primarily being powered by renewable energy sources and using recycled water, while generating nearly zero waste bound for landfill.
Five solar farms installed at the location generate nearly 10 million kilowatt-hours of clean electricity a year. Two arrays of single axis tracking solar panel based systems consisting of more than 18,000 solar panels have been installed on 36 acres of the facility’s agriculture property.
The three additional PV fields installed near the plant include a dual axis tracking system, a single axis rooftop array covering a car park and 10 stirling engine based dual axis tracking systems. A solar stirling engine consists of a closed cylinder containing a piston and a gas heated at one end by concentrated sunlight and cooled at the other. As the gas expands and cools, the piston moves, which drives a generator to create electricity.
Frito-Lay says the Casa Grande facility is now generating two-thirds of all energy used from renewable sources. Last year, the company managed to reduce the electricity used to make each bag of snacks by 22% (compared with 1999 levels) – enough energy to power over 15,000 homes for a year.
As in Australia, water is a precious resource in Arizona, with much of the state being desert. Frito-Lay has installed a Membrane Bio Reactor (MBR) and Low-Pressure Reverse Osmosis (LPRO) based water recovery and reuse system to recycle between 50% to 75% of water used by the plant.
Among other sustainability and energy efficiency initiatives, the Casa Grande facility sends under 1% of its total waste to landfill through extensive recycling and using food waste for cattle feed.
Al Carey, past CEO and president, Frito-Lay North America says the company will take what it has learned from the Casa Grande project and apply the lessons to other facilities where appropriate.
“Frito-Lay and its parent, PepsiCo, are committed to finding innovative solutions that are right for the business and right for the environment. The ‘near net zero’ project is an industry-leading example of how the two successfully intersect.”
Frito-Lay says it has already nearly reached or gone beyond its conservation goals to reduce water consumption by 50%; natural gas by 30%; and electricity by 25% (based on 1999 levels). The company has also created a strategy to reduce fuel use by its fleet of vehicles by 50% by 2020.
