The Greening of Fedco

The products we sell make the world greener. Jolted into greater awareness by the peak oil crisis, we authorized a committee to evaluate proposals and develop recommendations for reducing our energy use to make our own internal operations greener. We enlisted committee member Hillary Lister to conduct an internal audit in the following eight categories: intrucking supplies, shipping orders, commuting to work, electricity use, propane use, packaging, waste stream generation and pickup orders. We will review these areas to come up with a base figure for BTU’s used per dollar of sales in 2007-8. We aim to educate all of us—staff and customers alike—about our energy use, to identify areas where we can reduce our energy footprint and to implement proposals to green our operation. Specifically we will:

• Take advantage of a free walk-through energy audit offered by the Maine Public Utilities Commission.

• Commit a minimum of $10,000 annually and up to 10% of our profits over the next three years to reduce our energy use, making energy conservation a key organizing principle of our operation.

• Eliminate the 5% pickup discount for seed orders because it is more energy-efficient for us to ship these orders to you through UPS or through the postal service than for you to drive to us to pick them up. You are still welcome to come visit us and pick up orders.

• Switch our electricity consumption from the CMP standard offer (27% nuclear, 14% coal, 24% natural gas, 9% oil, 38% not identified) to Maine-generated hydropower offered through Maine Clean Power. This cleaner power will cost us an additional 3¢ per kwh, about $2,000 extra per year, but we feel it is worth it.

• Develop similar initiatives from our research.

Fedco Seeds, PO Box 520, Waterville, ME 04903
(207) 873-7333

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