Don’t Break the Chocolate!
Ghirardelli Chocolate Company replaced cardboard boxes with a fleet of reusable totes for internal distribution of its chocolate products. This saves $2.6 million over the life of the project, prevents 420 tons of soiled cardboard waste, and most importantly, reduces chocolate breakage.

Reusable Sharps Containers
Alta Bates Medical Center switched to reusable sharps containers from disposable. The new containers will eliminate 45 tons of plastic waste and reduce purchasing by $45,000 a year.

Waste Prevention in Real-Time
PeopleSoft installed four digital multi-function units (combination of printer, copier, and FAX) to replace 32 office machines, and added eight duplexing modules to existing printers. This pilot project reveals the effectiveness of two different technologies for preventing paper waste. If implemented facility-wide, the project will prevent 44 tons of office paper waste and save $400,000 a year, mainly in reduced office machine leasing costs.

A New Twist to Candy Manufacturing
American Licorice Company upgraded their production line by replacing an older inefficient drying system with a new spiral dryer. The old drying system didn't dry candy consistently. Imperfectly dried candy was scrapped. By uniformly drying candy the spiral dryer will eliminate 150 tons of candy-waste, reduce the amount of floor space necessary for the drying process, conserve energy, and cut costs by at least $265,000 a year.

Efficient Plastic Film Manufacturing
Pechiney Plastic Packaging, Inc. uses a re-pelletizer to capture the plastic scrap from one production line and prepare it as the raw material for another product. This not only prevents 150 tons of plastic waste but reduces virgin material purchasing by a minimum of $177,000 a year.

Reusable Plastic Pallets
ANG Newspapers replaced disposable wooden pallets with reusable plastic pallets throughout their internal distribution system. This project eliminates 37 tons of wooden pallet waste and saves $36,000 every year in pallet maintenance costs. The project improved the efficiency of ANG's distribution system by standardizing pallet size, and reduced the risk of accidents caused by broken pallets.

Packaging Scrap Solution
When Peerless Coffee changed from packaging one size product to another, its old packaging machines had to be manually recalibrated. Throughout this calibration process, Mylar packaging flowed through the machines, ending up as waste. Peerless purchased new packaging machinery that can be calibrated electronically, preventing 9 tons of metalized Mylar packaging waste and saving $100,000 each year in supply, labor, and disposal costs.

Clean and Green
Safeway switched from 55-gallon supply drums to a bulk liquid storage tank for cleaning solution. Buying cleanser in bulk gives Safeway a 15% price reduction, prevents the creation of 3 tons of plastic-drum waste a year, reduces spills and improves worker safety.

Paperless Office
The East Bay Regional Park District uses software to make business processes paperless, and to prevent the unnecessary printing and disposal of dated forms, publications, and letterhead.

Dry Hands, Low Costs
Alameda County Medical Center replaced multi-fold towels with roll towel dispensers in the restrooms at all three of its campuses. The project prevents 25 tons of paper towel waste a year and reduces labor required to refill the dispensers by 60%.

Reusable Cloth Gift-wrap
FabricWrap conducted a test market for reusable cloth gift-wrap. Approximately 467 tons of disposable paper gift-wrap is thrown out every year in Alameda County. FabricWrap's product provides an attractive reusable alternative that is competitively priced.