Palermo's finds a way to recycle less-than-perfect pizza crusts
Company supports efforts to make Menomonee Valley 'green'
As
workers on the rapid-fire pizza line at Palermo Villa Inc. are churning
out nearly 1 million frozen pizzas a day, every perfectly round crust
makes it onto the line.
But flawed pies — the ones that are cracked, somehow missed a key ingredient, or don't quite make it into the coveted circle shape — won't move down the line to get doused with sauce.
So they end up on the floor. From there, they used to be tossed in the trash.
Instead of that, workers at Palermo's now toss the faulty crusts into a brown bin that ends up keeping something edible out of the landfill.
Every year, Palermo's is sending 900 tons of pizza crusts to a waste processor, where they are ground up and then distributed as animal feed for livestock.
Feeding animals instead of filling a landfill is among the achievements that made Palermo's the Distinguished Performer in the Environment category this year on the Deloitte Wisconsin 75 list of closely held companies.
Palermo's moved its headquarters to the Menomonee Valley in 2006, deciding to open in what had been a brownfield. Since then it has been working in concert with Menomonee Valley Partners in efforts to "green" the valley, said Laurie Fallucca, Palermo's chief creative officer. That includes support for Three Bridges Park and the Urban Ecology Center's valley campus, as well as work by company employees who help as part of Palermo's stewardship crew.
The Palermo's "stew crew" heads out, usually at midday on Fridays, to help keep the Hank Aaron State Trail tidy and to prevent invasive plants from overtaking native plantings. Palermo's is one of about a dozen companies or neighborhood groups with stewardship crews.
"It's neat to be able to get out and walk the trail in the middle of the day," said Jessica Rautmann, a member of the crew. "People riding bikes will stop and thank us for picking up garbage, so it's a really good feeling."
Sometimes Palermo's is paying extra for its green initiatives. The company has been using cardboard from recycled pulp, with the Sustainable Forestry Initiative logo on it, for both its pizza boxes and the "master cases" that deliver a dozen pizzas at a time to the supermarket.
In all, that's more than 15 million pounds of cardboard a year. Going with the greener packaging option costs the company more, Fallucca said, and Palermo's did marketing surveys to gauge whether consumers really cared about whether the Sustainable Forestry logo was on the package.
"A lot of companies are moving to that. All of that is a lot more expensive than the other packaging, but since we've moved in here we've always done that," Fallucca said.
"If we didn't have to do this, it would cost us less," she said. "We've definitely done research. We're always like, 'Do people really care?' The answer is: 'Yes, they do.'"
Other environmental work at the company included the installation of energy-saving occupancy-sensor lighting in the factory and converting to LED lighting, as well as recycling tons of cardboard, plastic and plastic drums.
The company also donates dozens of large plastic food barrels that are reused as rain barrels in neighborhood gardens in Milwaukee.
Though Palermo's has had labor challenges in recent years, the company has carved out a "slice" for stewardship in its pizza-shaped corporate mission statement.
The company employs 645 people and is finding more and more that new hires want their company to be a good citizen, she said.
"We have a large group of millennials working here. They grew up on 'reduce, reuse, recycle,' so for them it's been a big part of how they grew up," she said.
But flawed pies — the ones that are cracked, somehow missed a key ingredient, or don't quite make it into the coveted circle shape — won't move down the line to get doused with sauce.
So they end up on the floor. From there, they used to be tossed in the trash.
Instead of that, workers at Palermo's now toss the faulty crusts into a brown bin that ends up keeping something edible out of the landfill.
Every year, Palermo's is sending 900 tons of pizza crusts to a waste processor, where they are ground up and then distributed as animal feed for livestock.
Feeding animals instead of filling a landfill is among the achievements that made Palermo's the Distinguished Performer in the Environment category this year on the Deloitte Wisconsin 75 list of closely held companies.
Palermo's moved its headquarters to the Menomonee Valley in 2006, deciding to open in what had been a brownfield. Since then it has been working in concert with Menomonee Valley Partners in efforts to "green" the valley, said Laurie Fallucca, Palermo's chief creative officer. That includes support for Three Bridges Park and the Urban Ecology Center's valley campus, as well as work by company employees who help as part of Palermo's stewardship crew.
The Palermo's "stew crew" heads out, usually at midday on Fridays, to help keep the Hank Aaron State Trail tidy and to prevent invasive plants from overtaking native plantings. Palermo's is one of about a dozen companies or neighborhood groups with stewardship crews.
"It's neat to be able to get out and walk the trail in the middle of the day," said Jessica Rautmann, a member of the crew. "People riding bikes will stop and thank us for picking up garbage, so it's a really good feeling."
Sometimes Palermo's is paying extra for its green initiatives. The company has been using cardboard from recycled pulp, with the Sustainable Forestry Initiative logo on it, for both its pizza boxes and the "master cases" that deliver a dozen pizzas at a time to the supermarket.
In all, that's more than 15 million pounds of cardboard a year. Going with the greener packaging option costs the company more, Fallucca said, and Palermo's did marketing surveys to gauge whether consumers really cared about whether the Sustainable Forestry logo was on the package.
"A lot of companies are moving to that. All of that is a lot more expensive than the other packaging, but since we've moved in here we've always done that," Fallucca said.
"If we didn't have to do this, it would cost us less," she said. "We've definitely done research. We're always like, 'Do people really care?' The answer is: 'Yes, they do.'"
Other environmental work at the company included the installation of energy-saving occupancy-sensor lighting in the factory and converting to LED lighting, as well as recycling tons of cardboard, plastic and plastic drums.
The company also donates dozens of large plastic food barrels that are reused as rain barrels in neighborhood gardens in Milwaukee.
Though Palermo's has had labor challenges in recent years, the company has carved out a "slice" for stewardship in its pizza-shaped corporate mission statement.
The company employs 645 people and is finding more and more that new hires want their company to be a good citizen, she said.
"We have a large group of millennials working here. They grew up on 'reduce, reuse, recycle,' so for them it's been a big part of how they grew up," she said.
http://www.jsonline.com/business/palermos-finds-a-way-to-recycle-less-than-perfect-pizza-crusts-b99361422z1-277892451.html
