Since my last update, I feel like I’ve been able to grow significantly within my environmental knowledge as well as gaining several practical professional skills. As my fellowship is coming to an end, I’ve not only had the chance to look at all the work I’ve completed, but also get to look where I’m going next.

B Corp

Ever since figuring out what a B Corporation was, I knew that I wanted to work for one. Whether that was a business that was already certified or a company looking to become certified, I knew that the requirements for a B Corp certification aligned with my own values and vision for the future of business.

I was excited when I learned that Tofurky was a B Corp because it was like a cherry on top of a business that I believed was already doing so much for the environment. Tofurky was first certified in 2017 as a B Corp and as a requirement, it is required to recertify every 3 years. While there was a team assembled and ready in both 2020 and early 2021 to complete the recertification, we didn’t end up getting any word until 2022. This meant that as the sustainability person at the company, I got to help with the entirety of the environmental section. I’ve previously looked through B Corp’s Impact Assessment but this time I was able to actively enter all the work that our company and I have been doing.

I think going through this process of recertification was insightful and made me appreciate the certification and its value so much more. Several times during our verification stage, we were required to show proof of certain practices and behaviors at the company. This meant that we needed to not only confirm the practices we have, but also show the formal written policy for each one.

Career Development

One of the most exciting parts of my work recently has been looking at where I want my career path to go. I know I want to stay within sustainability at businesses, possibly even manufacturing companies, but now I see so many more options for where I can specialize. Two of the most enticing paths right now are moving towards being a sustainability analyst or gaining some knowledge on process engineering.

I really like the idea of being a sustainability analyst mostly because I have enjoyed working with data at Tofurky. Since beginning my fellowship, I’ve keeping track of and working with the company’s utility and waste data. Over time, I’ve discovered better ways to not only model and present the data, but ways to overlay that data to make it more useful. One of the biggest changes that we’ve made is looking at the data from an intensity perspective. This allows us to look at how we’re doing while still accounting for growth.

Process engineering is another interesting path because it would give me the tools to make the change that I want to see in companies. Right now, I have some difficulties being able to make changes at Tofurky purely because I don’t have the background and knowledge to analyze a process and identify how we can make it more efficient. Getting further education in this would allow me to walk onto production floors, acknowledge areas for improvement, and subsequently offer solutions that we can test. As of right now I feel as if there is a large barrier to entry with this kind of work and requires further education.

I think the main reason I’m excited about both career paths is because they would give the skill sets, I need to make meaningful change at a company. Currently, I feel like there is value in learning some project and program management skills to deal with work, but there’s something missing when it comes to making change. That missing piece comes in the form of having the right people or information. Without having someone specialized in process engineering, there is a gap in our capability to drive change. While it would be nice to simply have someone else with these skills on the team, I’ve learned I feel most comfortable as a team member when I have some shared knowledge with those I’m working with.

Program Management

One of the biggest changes that has occurred in the new year is within the management of our sustainability program and the work that we are doing. I’ve struggled a lot in this experience with finding an effective way to work that not only establishes clear objectives, but also works for our diverse set of departments. Initially, most of the work we were doing revolved around a monthly meeting with occasional check-ins in between, but there were problems with this. While I and several others believed our monthly meetings were meant to function as working meetings, others in the group viewed it simply as a time for reporting progress. This breakdown in communication and understanding showed me that I needed to restructure the way we work.

The solution was transitioning over to a more formal program structure. This involved not only a steering committee/executive sponsors, but functional teams that each have their own meeting cadence, goals, and work structure. Already, this has felt way more productive and functional than the previous ways we were working. This has also allowed me to gain some valuable project and program management skills that I’ll be able to use in the future.

Since my last update, I have learned so much from a professional development standpoint as well as how to fail successfully.

Failing

These last few months have also given me what I’m sure I’ll call the “Scale Problem” for the rest of my career. As we have been trying to better manage our material wastes, one key piece of information that we have been missing is data regarding where and why we are producing waste in our production. To address this issue, the sustainability team and I decided that we would get back to the practice of weighing the waste bins on the production floor. The only issue was that the scale was broken and needed parts to be fixed.

I talked with several people, got the ball moving and was excited to get the scale fixed and begin measuring our wastes. A month later, the scale was still broken, and nothing had changed. I had wasted a lot of time chasing something that was simply wasting everyone’s time. At this point I had to reevaluate my goals and find a new path to get where I needed to go. I created a new measurement template that would go off volume rather than weight. This proved to be successful and allowed us to see where we are producing the most waste so that we can focus our efforts based on data.

My biggest lesson from all of this is that I can’t just wait on things to be fixed or anchor on the idea that something can’t be done because something is broken or not working as it should. I learned to be more flexible and to always be ready to find another solution to the same problem.

Another change that has come from the work I’ve been doing is that we may not have all the positions at the company that we need to be able to make the changes we want to see. When going through our production process and trying to make changes, one of the biggest realizations we had is that there was no single person in charge of continuous improvement of our process. This realization showed us an opportunity, as no one at the company has the capacity to pick up that work right now. Because of this, Chris, my mentor, decided to move onto trying to get someone to oversee continuous improvement. Now, we will be looking for a process engineer within the next year or so to help us continuously improve our process. Hopefully, this will help us to reduce our material waste and take some steps towards the 2030 goals we set as a company.

Managing capstone projects

Another fun development that has happened since my last post is that I worked with a capstone group from PSU to help me get a head start on Scope 3 emissions at Tofurky. Scope 3 emissions refers to all emissions that take place outside of a company’s own manufacturing (i.e., supply chain and distribution). For their project, they looked at our largest suppliers and through analysis of our sales and purchases last year, were able to give us a series of recommendations to get more thorough data around Scope 3 emissions. This has set us up for 2022 where we will be able to start asking our suppliers more questions as well as using more software to help organize the data we collect.

SEM

One of the coolest advancements so far in my time at Tofurky is that we are now a part of the Oregon Energy Trust’s Strategic Energy Management (SEM) program. This program has around 9 other businesses from around Oregon all participating to become more mindful about their energy usage.

With our team that we created; we have already set goals for reducing our energy usage with this program that will help us to achieve our 2030 goals. In November, we conducted a leak sweep where we walked around with an air leak detector that could help us locate any pipes that were leaking air. In one building alone we were able to find over 25 air leaks, showing us just one of the many opportunities we will have with this program to improve our energy performance.

The next steps with SEM are the biggest for the program and Tofurky. Within the next couple months, we will be conducting what they call a treasure hunt. This will involve the entire Tofurky SEM team and any other employees who wish to join in walking through the manufacturing facilities and pointing out any opportunities that we may have to reduce energy use. I really like Oregon Energy Trust’s approach to this as they look for a large quantity of ideas at first and then narrow it down to the low cost, high impact projects. Through this, we should be able to reduce our energy use drastically within the next year and into the future as well.

The final part of this program that has been cool to me is that it has allowed for me to network with similar businesses. I recently got to talk with the Sustainability Manager at Bob’s Red Mill, and we talked about participating in each other’s treasure hunts. Not only is it allowing our businesses to build a community of practice, but it also serves as a great way for me to get more knowledge and experience from someone who has walked a similar path to what I want to do. I look forward to all that this program can give.

Spanish class

The final thing that I decided to do during my fellowship is join the Tofurky bilingual program. This program is a 16-week class of 8 English speakers and 8 Spanish speakers at the company. Each week we have time to learn vocabulary and grammar from a Spanish teacher, and then we are paired up to speak with someone native in the other language. This has been a wonderful experience so far because not only have I gotten to practice Spanish, but I have also gotten the chance to meet some people from the production floor that I’ve never met before. Most of our production employees also primarily speak Spanish, so this program really helps to bridge the language gap.

Composting Project

The final thing that I’ve done within the last few months is a composting project. Recently, Tofurky discontinued a few products from our product line and as a result, had a bunch of the dry mix that we used leftover. We didn’t want to just throw all that product out so instead we worked with a local composting facility to take all of it. We emptied pallets of ingredients into giant dumpsters and sent it away to be composted. This was just a small one day project but it was cool to see how much waste could possible be diverted in the future.