Baking a better future: A note from our founder

Trash has helped our business thrive, and more importantly, it’s allowed us to give back to our community.

It’s trash that has enabled Companion Baking to become a member of 1% for the Planet and donate 1% of our annual revenue to environmental causes. So, yeah, I’m excited about trash.

I haven’t always been a trash-o-phile. It started with the people in my life who always ask the tough questions and demand straight answers: my kids.

What are you doing to save the planet?

My kids were learning a lot about sustainability in their elementary school, and one day they asked me: “What does your work do to save the planet?”

At the time, I was battling the challenges of expanding the business. Sustainability wasn’t top of mind. But as it turned out, there was one place where I could boost my profitability and slash my environmental footprint at the same time: the humble trash bin.

A trash bill and an awakening

Flashback to 2015. After 22 years in our original bakery in South St. Louis, we were moving into a new facility. The growth was exciting, but it came with many unexpected challenges. Suddenly, we were responsible for everything from cutting the grass to managing much more complicated bills.

The bill that shocked me the most? The trash bill.

We were used to writing a flat check for trash every month. But when we became the building owners, we started seeing the actual volume. At one point, we were sending 1.6 million pounds of waste to the landfill every year.

It felt awful. It’s not something I would have wanted to tell the kids. And it didn’t make sense for the business, which was struggling with profitability and a looming bank loan.

I realized that reducing our trash bill was one way we could increase our profitability and our sustainability. So, I asked my team, “How do we reduce our trash?”

Step 1: Reducing our waste volume by using less and recycling more

We opened up the question to the team, and the ideas started flowing in. Do we need to print two copies of every invoice? What kind of packaging are our ingredients coming in? Can we recycle that? Compost it? Avoid it altogether?

We started implementing team member ideas:

• We stopped printing unnecessary invoices
• We audited our ingredient packaging and switched from gallon jugs to five-gallon buckets for ingredients like oil and honey (and now donate the empties to an urban farm for reuse)
• We invested in flour silos that eliminated thousands of flour bags per truckload
• We started recycling soft plastics and those little metal bread bag wickets

These changes and more started adding up to huge savings.

The more we shared our results with the team, the more fired up they became. They wanted to do more.

Then someone asked: could we start donating our imperfect bread to worthy causes?

Step 2: Reducing our trash by donating imperfect bread

That team member’s question is what began our journey to connecting with our local food bank.

When you’re baking at the scale we do, our customers expect a certain amount of uniformity in their product. But bread is a living product, so a certain percentage might come out of the oven a little wonky.

It’s still high-quality bread that tastes great, but we can’t use it for our customers because it doesn’t always achieve the perfect color or shape that they are looking for.

Instead of throwing this bread in the trash, where it will take up landfill space and cost us money in trash hauling fees, we donate this nutritious, delicious (but slightly miscolored or misshapen) bread to the St. Louis Area Foodbank.

As we built our partnership with the St. Louis Area Foodbank, we were impressed and touched by how much good they were doing in our community.

The more we learned, the more we wanted to help. So, this year, instead of only donating overstock or misprints, we baked bread to order and donated it.

It’s a simple way we can nourish our community.

Step 3: Reinvesting our savings into our community

We still wanted to do more. With the money that we were saving on our trash bill, we decided as a company to use some of these savings to increase our charitable giving.

Every month, a different Companion team member chooses a nonprofit, and we make a donation in their name. It keeps the giving spirit personal to our team.

We have made product donations to support many local organizations, including Pedal the Cause. Learn more about our community impact and consider supporting one of these fantastic organizations.

Making the commitment to 1% for the Planet

Recycling, composting and donating has saved us more money than I ever dreamed. It freed up enough money for us to commit to something that we’ve been wanting to do for a long time.

I’m proud to say that Companion Baking is a member of 1% for the Planet.

We now donate 1% of our revenue to worthy environmental causes. Thanks to our progress on waste reduction, we were able to free up funds to make this possible.

What I’ve learned

I had no idea when I started that the trash bin could mean so much to me. Because of the trash bin, I have an answer to give my kids when they ask me what Companion Baking is doing to save the planet.

1. We reduce our waste by eliminating unnecessary packaging and reusing or recycling as much as possible
2. We donate nourishing bread to our community
3. We use the money we’ve saved in our waste reduction efforts to become members of 1% for the Planet and donate 1% of our annual revenue to environmental causes

Our sustainability and local giving have contributed to building a business every Companion team member is proud of. It’s even put this baker on the stage at TedX St Louis.

A wonderful, satisfying feat for the humble trash can.

Josh Allen

Founder and CEO
Companion Baking