{"id":390,"date":"2007-12-01T23:59:29","date_gmt":"2007-12-01T23:59:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.energyrefuge.com\/blog\/environmental-potato-chips-better-manufacturing\/"},"modified":"2017-09-05T17:54:53","modified_gmt":"2017-09-05T21:54:53","slug":"environmental-potato-chips-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.energyrefuge.com\/blog\/environmental-potato-chips-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Environmental Potato Chips: Better Manufacturing"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have been to different potato chip manufacturing facilities with my kids. In Pennsylvania, near Hershey’s there are both Utz and Herr’s potato chip factories. I like them both and it was great going to them. The best part was when our tour guide went into the plant proper from our glass enclosed walkway and got us some right-off-the-line potato chips. They were delicious. Still warm. Crunchy. Salty. Fresh.<\/p>\n

No there is a new plant in the works that I would love to visit. In the NYTimes, they wrote <\/a>about what Frito Lay is doing. Frito Lay is going all out to reduce the water and energy consumption of one plant as a test. Frito-Lay already saves $55 million a year in utility costs through its current conservation program. But this plant is to go even further. <\/p>\n

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Read the article to see the techniques they are going to use. And if you are in manufacturing, maybe there are some ideas here that would work at one of your plants as well.<\/p>\n

But the real discussion is: Heat 13,000 homes for a year OR 212 million bags of snack chips. That is how much natural gas this 2 football field sized plant uses in a year.<\/p>\n

I, for one, love potato chips. They are my number one comfort tied with ice cream. But I would be more than happy to stop eating chips altogether if it meant that 13,000 homes got heated. There are things we buy that we do not need. Each of those things have multiple costs: our money, our energy, our environment, our time. I also do not want to see an article on the energy used to make and store ice cream. I would have to stop that guilty pleasure as well.<\/p>\n

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