ST. LOUIS, MO. — Josh Allen, founder and owner of St. Louis-based Companion Baking, was named the 2021 “Sustainability Hero” at the TipTree World Bread Awards. Mr. Allen was also named Midwest runner-up in the Bread Heroes competition.
Founded in 2017, the World Bread Awards are supported by the International Baking Industry Exposition and recognize bakers making a difference in their community. Mr. Allen received the Sustainability Hero award for his efforts in reducing Companion’s waste production by more than 1 million lbs.
“At Companion Baking, we have focused on reducing food waste at our factory for the past 40 months,” Mr. Allen said. “When we first moved into our new facility in 2015, we didn’t anticipate the challenges we’d encounter with growing the business. Those challenges manifested themselves as mistakes in our production, which essentially means lots and lots of waste.”
Companion has grown significantly since its founding in 1993, when Mr. Allen leased a small corner of his family’s manufacturing facility to begin the bakery. He started with just six breads in Companion’s product portfolio, but gradually he began partnering with local and regional restaurants and grocery chains to build the customized bread programs Companion is known for today. Today, Companion’s breads are served in more than 400 restaurants, grocery stores and business across the country. But such large growth can also mean lots of new waste.
“At our low point, we were generating nearly 1.6 million lbs of annual trash,” Mr. Allen said, a number that astounded him. “That amount of trash will cover an entire football field nearly five feet deep in waste.”
But through a series of micro-innovations, Companion was able to dramatically reduce waste production. Mr. Allen said many small changes and adaptations to their process added up to lots of trash saved. For example, Companion began reclaiming the dusting flour on one of the bread lines that keeps the dough from sticking to the belt on the machine.
“In the past, we simply emptied the catch trays into the trash,” Mr. Allen explained. “With the trash initiative, one of our bakers decided to calculate the amount of flour we were throwing away, since the line runs 16-18 hours a day. It was a total of 175 lbs, six days per week—nearly 55,000 thousand lbs per year.”
The waste reduction, coupled with a comprehensive composting and recycling program that evolved through the initiative, has resulted in a 76% reduction in Companion’s landfill contributions.
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November 10, 2021 at 12:15PM
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World Bread Awards recognizes Companion Baking's sustainability efforts - Baking Business
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