Smithfield Foods, Inc., Smithfield, Va., honored several of its facilities and employees for their successful sustainability efforts through a number of innovative environmental projects during fiscal year 2013 that hepled save more than 592 million gallons of water, nearly 12 million kilowatts of electricity and about 721,000 gallons of fuel oil, producing an annual cost savings of more than $8 million.

Smithfield executives presented one President's Award and 12 Environmental Excellence Awards for a variety of project categories that represent a company-wide commitment to sustainability, such as wastewater handling and treatment; environmental training and/or ISO 14001; resource conservation-waste reduction; packaging reduction; best recycling of a previous year's project; community outreach and innovative solutions to a compliance issue.

The President's Award was presented to John Morrell, of Peru, Ind., for its resource conservation/waste reduction project. John Morrell's Peru plant became the first Smithfield Foods facility to achieve zero waste-to-landfill, reducing solid waste from 999 tons in fiscal year 2008 down to less than 25 tons during fiscal year 2013. The John Morrell facility also won an Environmental Excellence Award in the wastewater handling and treatment category for saving 3.5 million gallons of water and more than 5,000 pounds of chemicals. For fiscal year 2013, 182 company-wide projects were submitted for review.

"We're very proud of our employees, who continue to find innovative ways to promote our sustainability efforts by enhancing our environmental management processes. Clearly, their ongoing efforts are producing measurable sustainability results that create value for our businesses and communities," says Dennis Treacy, executive vice president and chief sustainability officer.

Smithfield's Environmental Excellence Awards program is intended to inspire employees to practice creative environmental stewardship by recognizing outstanding internal efforts in environmental management.