Dean Foods Case Study

Dean Foods is a food and beverage company that specializes in dairy products, based out of Dallas, Texas. Dean Foods manufactures and distributes a wide variety of branded and private label dairy products. The products include milk, ice cream, creamers, and cultured dairy products. The Company is one of the nation's largest processors and distributors of fluid milk with about 75 plants located throughout the United States. They are made up of about 19,000 employees and in 2012 their nets sales reached 11.4 billion dollars. The company was founded by Dean R. Honas who owned an evaporated milk processing plant in Illinois back in the 1920s. Dean purchased other Illinois dairy plants and developed his enterprise from a small regional dairy distributor to a successful food company. The company is also known for their sustainability efforts over the past 8 years.

Dean Foods is making the effort to reduce their carbon footprint by using as few resources as possible and increasing the efficiency of the resources they have to consume. Their first greenhouse gas reduction goal was set in 2008 and aimed to reduce the emissions per gallon produced 20 percent by the year 2013. In 2012 the progress was assessed and the goal was changed to a 25 percent reduction per gallon produced by 2020. In 2008 the total metric tons of CO2 the company was responsible for producing was 1,616,810. By 2012 the total amount CO2 Dean Foods produced was 1,432,760. This is a 14 percent reduction in greenhouse gasses.

Interface used the Greenhouse Gas protocol corporate standard to monitor their greenhouse gas emissions. This standard is responsible for reporting six different greenhouse gases which are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs...

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...(i.e. Costco/ BJ’s), hotels and restaurants, convenience stores, schools, hospitals and a variety of other institutions. Since they have one of the biggest fleets of refrigerated vehicles, a large part of their greenhouse gas reduction goal pertains to transportation. In 2008, s goal was set to reduce the entire fleet’s CO2 emissions by 50,000 metric tons come 2013. This goal was actually surpassed by the end of 2010 and revised in 2012 to reduce the distribution fleet’s emissions 95,000 metric tons by 2020. In 2007, Dean Foods began working with cold-plate refrigeration technology that replaced traditional mechanical refrigeration systems. This upgraded technology is responsible for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by about 18,000 pounds per truck a year. By the end of 2011, more than 50% of their truck fleet operated with the new cold plate refrigeration systems.