Cleaner Energy for a Cleaner Environment – A History of Reducing Emissions in Evansville

As a world leader in infant and children’s nutrition, Mead Johnson plays an important role in the global community. Our mission to nourish the world’s children for the best start in life goes beyond our focus on marketplace responsibility and providing the best science and nutritional quality in our products. It extends to our commitment to give back to the communities in which we operate by supporting infants and children in vulnerable circumstances, as well as protecting the environment which we all share.

One step on the road toward greater sustainability has been the adoption of cleaner energy sources at our largest U.S. production facility in Evansville, Ind.

In 1999, we completed a multi-million dollar upgrade at the operating plant to convert from coal to cleaner-burning natural gas. A few years later, we decided to take our efforts a step further by seeking to completely eliminate the burning of fossil fuels at our Evansville plant. To accomplish that, we initiated a landfill gas-to-energy project.

Completed in 2009, the project allowed the facility to switch from using natural gas to landfill gas, which is considered a renewable energy source, thereby promoting cleaner air and eliminating the annual equivalent of:

greenhouse gas emissions from 4,400 passenger vehicles, or carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from burning 125 railcars of coal, or the amount of CO2 absorbed by 5,500 acres of pine forest.

This switch has enabled us to decrease the amount of CO2 emissions from our Evansville operations by 70 percent. In addition to the CO2 reduction, the burning of landfill gas reduces the release into the atmosphere of methane, a gas that has 23 times the negative environmental impact of CO2.

Moving forward, developing and expanding sustainable best practices across the company will remain an area of focus for us. From manufacturing to packaging to distribution, we are looking for ways to continue to reduce Mead Johnson’s resource footprint and environmental impact for the benefit of future generations.