Slurp, Reduce, Repeat
You know what’s better than recyclable plastic? No plastic at all. By developing microwaveable paper bowls and cups for our pho and ramen, we’ve saved nearly 2 million pounds of plastic last year alone.
And that’s a lot of bowls and cups. That’s enough paper bowls and cups to stretch from San Francisco to Chicago. Enough to pile as tall as the empire state building 7,634 times. Enough to stack far enough into space that we’d probably hit a satellite or two. Anyways, you get the idea.
Move Over, Plastic
Beyond cups and bows, we’ve cut waaaaay back on the plastic used in packaging, shipping, slurping, and everything in between. Do we wrap our noodles in plastic? NO. Individual bowls and cups? NO. 8-Packs? Cases!? NOOOOO.
All these efforts and more keep over 2.6 million pounds of plastic out of landfills. Every. Year. Yeah, that’s right. Move over, plastic.
Fiber FTW
There’s been some incredibly rad advances recently when it comes to using natural, compostable fibers in place of plastic. And let us be the first to tell you, WE ARE HERE FOR IT.
We’ve replaced some of plastic microwaveable trays with compostable fiber alternatives. As a result, we’re keeping hundreds of thousands of pounds of plastic out of landfills every year and that’s jsut the star tof it. Plus, the worms love it (or so we’re told).
When Second Is First
Don’t get us wrong, we love first. Ski races, surf competitions, go-kart birthday parties that we take way to seriously, you name it. But not when it comes to paper. We’ve replaced our first-generation paper and cardboard packaging with recycled alternatives. That’s over 3.2 million pounds of packaging annually coming from recycled materials vs. pulp mills. Come to think of it, it almost feels like 1st place…
Logistic Ninja-ness
Like any good ninja, we’ve been sneaking around in the shadows, taking action while remaining mostly unseen. Well, we’re finally ready to take our mask off and come into the light. Over the last year, we’ve completely reimagined and redesigned our case packs and container shipments to greatly reduce empty space, increase efficiency, and reduce our shipments and the related fuel and carbon emissions by up to 30%.
We also pack all our products on endlessly re-usable CHEP pallets, saving over 42,000 lbs. of waste and 426,000 lbs. of carbon emissions last year alone. HIIIIYA!
Warehouse > Greenhouse
We’re always looking for ways to make our warehouse process, well, greener. Solar energy, other renewables, food compost or donation programs, recycle programs…even darn-near carbon-neutral forklifts. The details matter, because they all add up. For example, our largest warehouse, while doing all of these things, continues to invest particularly heavily in solar installations. This year, that’ll account for nearly 50% of all the power they use. And there’s nowhere to go but up from there.