As we think about Earth Day, our main focus for 2021 is our impact on the environment and sustainability. When we designed our flavor factory for our move to San Leandro in 2020, we envisioned how we could improve our current practices while making room for improvements in the future. After careful consideration, we decided to emphasize three key categories to reduce our environmental footprint and create a sustainable working environment.  
 

Power 

With our move to the new building, we thought carefully about how to reduce our overall energy consumption through the design of the Flavor Factory. We installed over 264 skylights and multiple 10 foot floor to ceiling windows to allow more natural light into the entire building, which not only reduces energy required but also creates a more pleasant workspace throughout our factory, warehouse and office areas. State of the art LED lighting is used throughout the office and factory with controls to automatically go off when no one is present and dim when natural light shines brightly through the windows or skylights. In the future, we plan to add a large solar installation to supply our electrical power to the factory.  
 

Water

It comes as no surprise that a company that makes flavoring syrups also uses a lot of water. With each batch of syrup, water is needed not only to make the syrup that you love, but to also sanitize the machinery used to create it. Our move to San Leandro gave us the opportunity to upgrade to an automated cleaning system using state of the art equipment to reduce the amount of water used for cleaning syrup tanks and production lines. In addition, we have begun to recycle clean wash water for secondary cleaning applications, further reducing our water usage. For items that can’t be cleaned with recycled water, we’ve incorporated new technology to remove water from the cleaning process altogether. Our newest addition to our production lines is our air rinsing machines that clean out every Torani bottle with a highly pressurized blast of air before delicious syrup is bottled inside. 
 

Waste

At Torani, we are constantly evaluating how we package our products. Over the past few years, we have reduced the amount of corrugate used in our cases, and the amount of material needed to make our PET bottles.   As we look ahead, we will continue to work to reduce our environmental footprint in our packaging which includes glass, PET and corrugate usage.  
 
Certified B Corporations meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance. At Torani, we are aware of the impact our decisions have on our our team members, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment. We believe businesses can be an every day force for good, and when like-minded companies join together, we can create greater change. That’s why we became a Certified B Corporation in 2019. We are proud to stand with for-profit conscious companies to advocate for opportunity for all.
 
While we’ve made many improvements, we know we still have more opportunities to grow. As we settle into our new home in San Leandro, we’ll continue to identify and set new goals to reduce water usage, waste, energy, and material in our packaging.  We plan to use the Sustainable Development Goals as a framework as focusing on these will allow us to elevate our business to become a more sustainable Torani.