As I’ve noted many times before, organic food is all the rage these days… But what do you do if you’re a food producer that got there before everyone else jumped on the bandwagon? Rest on your laurels? Not if you’re Oregon-based Kettle Foods. The snack food company, which makes natural and organic potato chips and tortillas, decided that if organic is good enough for its customers, than its also good enough for the work environment. From Salem’s Statesman Journal:
“Organic” is no longer a term used solely for some of the ingredients Kettle Foods uses in its chips.
The snack-food factory is on track to be the first corporation in the state to have an all-organic landscape, which means no chemicals are used.
The result: a healthier place for employees who eat lunch outside, fish and amphibians in nearby Mill Creek and wildlife searching for food in the area, said Jim Green of Kettle Foods and the consultant the company is using, Jim Toler of Willamette Organics.
While the company stopped using chemical pesticides and herbicides on its landscape over two years ago, they brought in Willamette to help them get organic certification for their campus grounds. Kettle isn’t just jumping on the sustainability gravy train, though: their website illustrates a range of sustainable activities from making biodiesel out of their used cooking oil to power company vehicles (shown above) to restoring wetlands around the headquarters to using both solar and wind power to run their operation. I’m a potato chip junkie — hey, admitting it is the first step, right? I’ll have to keep a lookout for Kettle chips next time I’m jonesing for a fix…
Categories: food, organic, landscape, potatochips, kettlefoods, Oregon