Smithfield Foods Inc. has extended use of the CHEP pooling program to all shipments to take advantage of environmental and efficiency savings. The company is now using CHEP pallets to transport product from more than 40 Smithfield Specialty Foods, John Morrell & Co., Farmland Foods, Smithfield Beef, and Butterball facilities to supermarkets, wholesale distributors, club stores, and foodservice distributors across the United States and Canada.
Employing the CHEP system since 2001, Smithfield had previously used limited-use, whitewood pallets to ship product. The company determined that these pallets produced high supply chain costs, poor quality platforms, and needlessly added trashed wood to the waste stream. Customers were also requesting a pallet they did not have to maintain.
The CHEP Pallet Pooling System generates less solid waste, uses less energy, and creates fewer greenhouse gas emissions than other shipping options, according to a recent Life-Cycle Inventory (LCI) Analysis conducted by Franklin Associates, a division of Eastern Research Group. Based on LCI findings, as a result of using the CHEP program as opposed to limited use, whitewood pallets, Smithfield is helping to save:
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20.7 million pounds of solid waste from entering landfills and waste streams (enough waste to fill 925 dump trucks).
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64.3 billion Btus of energy (enough electricity to power nearly 1,700 homes for a year).
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11 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions from entering the atmosphere (the annual carbon dioxide emissions equivalent of taking 960 cars off the road).
