Did you know it takes up to 1,000 years for a plastic grocery bag to decompose in a land fill, plus they are a threat to land and marine mammals? Since we introduced our Spartan reusable bags, we have kept millions of bags from landfills. We also have converted our VG’s plastic bags to bio-degradable bags. Considering VG’s customers alone use 25 million bags a year, offering a bio-degradable bag makes good environmental sense.
In July 2009, we began using returnable/recyclable plastic pallets to ship product from vendors to Spartan’s warehouses. In our first month, we received approximately 500 iGPS pallets per week (over 2,000 for the month) that were previously wood pallets.
In August 2009, we renovated our Grand Rapids facility to reduce water usage when cleaning our trucks and trailers. By using an environmentally sound enzyme wash, we have saved 1,638,000 gallons of water and reduced electricity by 1,556 kilowatt-hours. We also are testing new low profile tires on our fleet to improve overall miles per gallon by 3-5%. In one year, our fleet travels approximately 12.3 million miles – almost 493 trips around the world! The gas saving alone are substantial – not to mention the carbon emissions.
Our wireless on-board tracking system combines communications and a global positioning system (GPS) to allow for improved asset and efficiency management, full access to trailer locations, refrigeration settings, service history and fuel levels with remote real time visibility.
 |