Mount Pleasant West Liberty Foods plant certified 'landfill free'

An Eastern Iowa meat processing plant on Tuesday celebrated being certified "landfill free" for diverting more than 99 percent of its waste.

West Liberty Foods in Mount Pleasant, with 550 employees working three shifts, produces 2 million pounds of lunch meat each week for restaurants, supermarkets, food service distributors and other customers.

The 85,000-square-foot plant at 2225 E. Commerce Dr. diverts nearly 2 million pounds,  or roughly 62.5 dump trucks, of waste each year from the local landfill.

Ed Garrett, chief executive officer of West Liberty Foods, said the Iowa plant is the second of the company's meat processing plants to achieve "landfill free" status as verified by NSF International, an independent public health and safety organization.

"We celebrated being landfill free about three months ago at our plant in Tremonton, Utah," Garrett said. "We're hoping to achieve landfill free status at our West Liberty plant in the next 90 days. We're probably 70 percent there, but that plant is a kill facility so it takes a little more effort because we are processing live turkeys."

West Liberty Foods, a 1,900-employee cooperative owned by 47 Iowa turkey farmers, launched the drive to divert more than 99 percent of its waste from the landfill about a year ago after Garrett challenged senior management and team members.

"I asked them to look into what it would take to make our company and our facilities landfill free," Garrett said. "They did it by partnering with other companies involved in recycling, incinerating and generating electricity from waste.

"They started by rolling up their sleeves, dressing in smocks and boots, and chasing trash trucks. The landfill opened up the trucks and dumped everything out so they could sort through the plant's waste."

Michele Boney, West Liberty Foods environmental compliance officer, said 62 waste streams were identified.

"Fifty-four percent of the 2 million pounds of waste that we're diverting each year is recycled or being sent to a composting facility," Boney said. "The other 46 percent is being sent to a cement kiln where it is utilized as energy instead of burning coal.

"The burning of the waste by the cement kiln generates ash, which ends up becoming part of the cement as filler."

Boney said the work to make the plant landfill free has changed the corporate culture at the Mount Pleasant and Tremonton plants.

"Our associates are looking at what they use to bring their lunch to work," she said. "They're passing up ZipLoc plastic bags for reusable containers. They're making conscious decisions to recycle where possible at work and in their homes."

Boney said one team at the plant is working with local restaurants to end the use of Styrofoam takeout containers.

"We were able to find a way to recycle (potato) chip bags, but we were unable to find any way to recycle Styrofoam," she said.