Smithfield Foods recognized several of the company's facilities and employees for their successful efforts in "creating sustainable value" by implementing and managing innovative environmental projects.

Smithfield Foods, Inc., Smithfield, Va., recognized several of the company's facilities and employees for their successful efforts in "creating sustainable value" by implementing and managing innovative environmental projects. As a result of these projects, Smithfield saved 219 million gallons of water and 12 million kilowatts of electricity. These reductions, along with other conservation measures included in the project submissions, resulted in an annual cost savings of more than $12 million.

One President's Award and 12 Environmental Excellence Awards were presented for a wide range of project categories, including outreach, wastewater treatment and handling, environmental training and/or ISO 14001, resource conservation waste reduction, packaging reduction and best recycling of a previous year's project. In total, 167 companywide projects were submitted for review.

Farmland Foods, of Crete, Neb., received the President’s Award for its community outreach project. For the past two years, Farmland and Smithfield partnered with the TeamMates Mentoring Program in Crete as part of Learners to Leaders, the company's educational outreach initiative. Together, Learners to Leaders and TeamMates help young students find the confidence they need to succeed in life by pairing them with a caring adult mentor who provides guidance and support on a regular basis. Mentors, comprised of volunteers in the Crete community, including several Farmland employees, spend one hour every week with their assigned middle or high school student.

"Every day, our employees are working very hard to continually improve our environmental management processes, and their efforts and innovations have resulted in measurable sustainability achievements," says Dennis Treacy, executive vice president and chief sustainability officer for Smithfield.

Smithfield's Environmental Excellence Awards program is intended to inspire employees to practice creative environmental stewardship by recognizing outstanding internal efforts in environmental management. Sharing best practices among Smithfield's various operating companies drives improvement and spurs innovation across the company.