In this video press conference series, West Liberty Foods celebrated being certified a landfill-free company at the Bolingbrook, Ill. facility where a number of speakers highlighted the process and thanked the participants.

Ed Garrett, President and CEO of West Liberty Foods: I’m going to be very quick here. Congressman Foster, Mayor Claar, thank you very much for joining us. It’s an honor to have you here, and I’m going to be very, very quick because you are going to hear a lot from our two guest speakers about how we became landfill-free, but I do want to tell you what Michele said. Back early in 2011, I challenged our senior staff to take our company to landfill-free. With that, I said I want to be third-party verified and I said I wanted it done in a year. Believe it or not, a short year after that, our Tremonton facility in early 2012, February, came aboard landfill-free, followed by Mt Pleasant in July of 2012. Then our West Liberty facility in December of 2012, which made our old company at the end of December or in January a landfill-free company. We ran that way for a couple of years, and then we had the great opportunity—our business was growing—to move to Bolingbrook[, Ill.], to the great city of Bolingbrook, and start operations. The first year, we had to figure out where the light switches were and where the restrooms were. Once we did that, we went to find out about landfill-free. Went to work, and we are here today to recognize that bunch, that division, our team members for getting Bolingbrook landfill-free. One number I want you to take home with you—and then I am going to turn it over to the Congressman—is we started this process, the first one, March 2012, four and a half years ago.l In those four and a half years to date, West Liberty Foods has diverted and removed 520 million pounds of waste that would have went to our landfills. That’s an amazing number. We’re a small to mid-size company in our industry, and I challenged our industry to just think what happens if we get half of our industry to do the same. It’s the right thing. We’re proud of our team members who really achieved this. They really got behind. They forced it. They knew it was a good thing, and I’m very, very proud of our success, so thank you very much.