The sustainability journey for Shearer's Foods Inc. began about five years ago when CEO and co-founder Bob Shearer took a short trip to Cleveland to hear General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt speak at a business gathering.
"He was talking about green and sustainability and I thought, my gosh, I can buy into everything he has to say," said Shearer.
What followed was an ambitious program of environmental goal-setting and performance that has led to a sheaf of awards. The company achieved a milestone this summer by attaining LEED-Platinum certification for its new plant in Massillon, Ohio.
Shearer's is the only snack food manufacturer thus far to earn certification at the highest level possible in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating and assessment system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council.
The company is holding a roundtable discussion about its Millennium Manufacturing Facility today at Kent State University and conducting a ribbon-cutting ceremony tomorrow at the new factory. GreenerBuildings.com Executive Editor Rob Watson, the "Founding Father of LEED," leads the talk today and will participate in Friday's event as well.
The company didn't set out to make green building history. But then, Shearer's family didn't set out to run a potato chip empire either. The family owned a grocery store and in 1974, the year Shearer graduated from Walsh College, the family bought a potato chip distribution business.
Shearer, whose early duties for the firm included selling and delivering products, now oversees a $350 million business. Besides the new plant in Massillon, the company has five other facilities -- in Brewster, Ohio, where the firm is headquartered, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia.
Inspired by Immelt, Shearer enlisted his firm in the EPA's Energy Star Partnership Program in 2006, one of the company's early steps in establishing its sustainability campaign.
Two years ago, when the firm's leaders were contemplating a new plant, they decided to build it green from the ground up, said Shearer. Aspirations aside, no one thought a LEED-Platinum rating would result.
"At the time we set out to build the new plant, [LEED-]Gold would have been a stretch," said Scott Weyandt, the head of sustainability for Shearer's Foods.
LEED standards require significant reductions in heat and water use. For manufacturers that means reducing the energy used to heat facilities and cutting way back on the large amount of energy used in the production process. For the snack food industry, in which the production process consumes more than 80 percent of all the energy used at manufacturing sites, the requirements can be daunting.
"The levels of the bars we had to achieve for LEED are extreme, which is why so many manufacturers back away from it," said Weyandt.
Indeed, in an effort to encourage manufacturers to reduce energy use, the EPA's Energy Star Program established a challenge for industry this year. Participating firms strive to reduce energy consumption by at least 10 percent over no more than a five-year period. Thirty firms signed up.
This spring, Shearer's plant in Lubbock, Texas, was one of just nine firms recognized in the launch of the "Energy Star Challenge for Industry." The factory cut consumption by 15 percent in 12 months.
By then, the first phase of the Massillon plant -- the roughly 47,000-square-foot facility being celebrated this week -- was complete. Operations were beginning to go on line. And Shearer's leaders and design team, who had decided to make an all-out effort for green building certification, were waiting to see if the innovations they put into the new building would pay off with more than LEED-Gold.
Next Page: The new plant by the numbers.
