Communities, industries, businesses and consumers are seeking options to incorporate renewable energy for many reasons, whether it is to offset the rising cost of fossil fuels, to be energy independent or to reduce the strain of a growing population depleting finite resources.

I have been at the International Dairy Foods Association for 22 years, and during that time water usage and wastewater discharges have always been important issues.Discussions about water in the past were usually about wastewater. Historically, municipalities added more and more houses and businesses to their sewage treatment plants, but did not upgrade the infrastructure to accommodate the increased load.

It is time to talk about best practices for the dairy processing industry. But I am not an engineer and I can’t get too technical, like recommending that you lower your refrigeration system’s minimum head pressure set point or telling you that you should lower your boiler steam generation pressure to match your process requirements.

The U.S. dairy industry has been diligently gathering data, crunching numbers and double-checking methodologies to ensure that the carbon footprint and life-cycle assessments for fluid milk and cheese are consistent with internationally accepted schemes and protocols. Since we are pretty much done with those, now what?