Why we are going carbon neutral in Gainesville, Georgia, – and embracing sustainability around the U.S.

Solar panels harness the power of the sun at Boehringer Ingelheim’s manufacturing plant in Gainesville, Georgia, about 45 miles northeast of Atlanta.

The company installed the panels as part of a larger effort to reduce its carbon footprint. Crews also are replacing hundreds of fluorescent light bulbs with more energy-efficient LED bulbs at about 10 buildings on the site.

Solar panels and LED light bulbs are key steps to achieve an ambitious goal: Boehringer Ingelheim plans to go carbon neutral in Gainesville by 2021, an initiative that exemplifies the company’s global commitment to sustainability.

Everett Hoekstra, president of Boehringer Ingelheim Animal Health USA Inc., said the company is making environmental improvements at plants in several parts of the United States. Boehringer Ingelheim’s Animal Health business employs more than 3,000 people in the U.S., primarily in places such as Georgia, Iowa, Missouri, New Jersey and Puerto Rico.

Going carbon neutral

It takes a lot of power to run a manufacturing plant.

Boehringer Ingelheim makes roughly 60 billion doses of vaccines for poultry every year in Gainesville, home to a thriving poultry industry and “Poultry Capital of the World.” The vaccines help protect poultry from disease in about 60 countries.

Carbon emissions from the site are roughly equivalent to the emissions from a thousand homes. About 75 percent of emissions from the site happen as a utility company generates electricity it sells to the plant, rather than any activity at the plant itself.

The rest of the carbon emissions attributable to the site relate to such things as the use of natural gas and exhaust from company cars and trucks, said Guillaume De Villequier, sustainability manager for Boehringer Ingelheim in Gainesville.

With a sense of duty to act as wise stewards of natural resources, Boehringer Ingelheim is exploring environmentally friendly ways to operate around the world.

In Gainesville, that has translated into actions such as installing a charging station for electric vehicles. The company has an electric car that employees drive from building to building or into town.

Crews also have replaced hundreds of fluorescent light bulbs with LED models that last longer and use less energy. They have installed dimmer switches and occupancy sensors that turn off the lights in empty rooms.

“It’s important for us to do our part to reduce our carbon emissions to combat climate change,” said Andy Brehm, the site director in Gainesville. “It takes an investment of time, energy and financial resources, but the payoffs benefit us all. It is the right thing to do.”

Engineers have installed smart meters to better measure electrical consumption at various parts of the plant. The goal: identify potential savings, measure the impact of energy-efficiency steps and use only as much power as needed.

The company is gradually retrofitting insulation to reduce heat loss.

It plans to purchase green electricity and invest in environmental projects related to animal health to offset the remaining emissions and become carbon neutral.

Cutting water and electrical use in St. Joseph, Missouri

For more than 100 years, Boehringer Ingelheim’s site in St. Joseph, Missouri, has played an innovative role in helping prevent disease in animals around the world. It also has led by example within Boehringer Ingelheim when it comes to sustainability. The plant produces a billion vaccine doses a year, which takes an incredible amount of resources. In an effort to reduce the impact of production, Boehringer Ingelheim has taken steps to conserve electricity and water use in St. Joseph.

In recent years, the site has installed solar panels at a key distribution warehouse and converted all exterior and parking lot lighting to LED lighting. The site also has begun converting interior fluorescent lighting to LED lighting.

Teams in St. Joseph also are reducing water use, recycling water, implementing air audits and eliminating unnecessary energy expenditures.

Crews are installing new high-efficiency process chiller equipment to use less energy to cool chilled water used in vaccine manufacturing. Once they finish that work, the company plans to re-purpose and re-use the old infrastructure to recycle water.

The site has cut its water usage by 6,000 gallons a day by repairing steam traps on site, said Jerry Gentry, director of Infrastructure, Safety, Environmental and Engineering in St. Joseph.

Boehringer Ingelheim recently invited graduate students from the University of Missouri to conduct an energy audit in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Energy. Their findings validated company goals for site improvements.

Like other Boehringer Ingelheim sites, the plant in St. Joseph is on a mission to cut its carbon footprint in half by 2030. In 2020, it plans to eliminate the use of single-use plastics, such as straws, forks and knives in the cafeteria. The company will replace some eliminated plastics with cardboard or paper versions.

“As manufacturing sites grow in production, as in St. Joseph, it’s a challenge to be more aggressive to compensate and stay on track for our goals,” Gentry said. “When energy usage is going up, we are doing what we can to reduce emissions and save energy.”