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I live about five miles from the plant, so it takes me about 15 minutes to ride to work
on my bike. It's an eco-friendly thing to do and saves a little bit on gas as well.
My name is Christian White, I'm a production manager at the Frito Lay plant in Casa Grande,
Arizona. We manufacture Cheetos, Fritos, Ruffles, Lays, Tostitos, Santitas, Doritos, Sun Chips
and produce about one hundred million pounds of product every day.
When I started out at PepsiCo I was in the sales department. I helped stock chips on
the shelves and deliver products to stores. For the past two years I've been overseeing
the conversion of our manufacturing facility to a net-zero no waste site. Ultimately it
means environmental sustainability. LEED certification is essentially a stamp
that says you're a green facility. The exciting part about that is we were the very first
manufacturing facility in all of the world to be able to receive that LEED certification
from the United States Green Building Council. We have a new technology called membrane bio-reactor
where water is recycled through a number of different filtration processes to go from
being fairly filthy to drinking water quality. We're installing thousands of solar panels.
The objective is to be able to power the plant all throughout the year but also to have excess
energy that will be put back on the power-grid to be used here in Casa Grande.
We have skylights. We use the sun during the day in order to be able to light the plant.
We have the offices and the manufacturing areas that are lit by the sun.
The ability to lead these projects allows me to be a better father at home. The coolest
thing for me is walking through the door and having my two daughters come and give me a
big hug and they're sincerely and truly happy to see me. We have a garden in the back yard.
We enjoy spending time back there planting flowers, tomatoes, cucumbers... they enjoy
watching the seeds grow and being able to eat the plants that we've grown.
It feels really good to work for PepsiCo knowing that it's not just about making money, it's
about doing the right thing. I get to see the direct results of my work and know that
what I'm doing has a very important impact. There's a greater cause to the all the hard
work that we're putting in here.