Aldi powers up green energy plans with new wind turbine
Aldi US has installed its first company wind turbine at a warehouse in Dwight, Ill., roughly 60 miles outside of its headquarters in Batavia. The turbine is a new environmental milestone for the company.
Last year Aldi earned recognition from the Environmental Protection Agency for its use of green power and eco-conscious refrigerants.
The wind turbine broke ground last summer and is now activated, powering up to 40% of the warehouse’s total energy needs. The turbine helps reduce the amount of grey electricity consumed from the grid and gets replaced with green electricity.
The turbine establishes a clean fuel source at the Aldi plant as well as for the town of Dwight, naturally limiting air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
The latest initiative builds off that EPA recognition and expands the retailer’s renewable energy portfolio. The company also recently joined the U.S. Plastics Pact, a collaborative group driven by The Recycling Partnership, the World Wildlife Fund and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation that aims to get companies together to unify around the design, use and reuse of plastics.
Previously announced, Aldi also aims to make all of its private label packaging reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025, while cutting packing materials for those products by 15% over the same period, and Aldi U.K. also recently committed to reducing plastic packaging by half by the same year.