Ghirardelli Chocolate Company replaced cardboard boxes with a fleet of reusable totes for internal distribution of its chocolate products. Besides preventing 350 tons of soiled cardboard waste each year, this eliminates the purchasing cost for cardboard boxes as well as disposal fees, and even reduces chocolate breakage.

Orcon Corporation, a manufacturer of film and seam products for the aerospace and carpet industries, purchased equipment and software to switch to a paperless office system. Incoming paperwork is scanned and saved to the network, instead of making duplicate hard copies for different departments. The company now generates well over a million (or 80%) fewer hard copies each year, has nearly eliminated the costs of long term paper document storage and destruction, and regained valuable office space formerly taken by 50 file cabinets.

Peerless Coffee & Tea Company in Oakland purchased computerized packaging equipment to reduce expensive Mylar packaging waste, previously generated by their coffee bagging equipment. This waste prevention effort has resulted in savings of over $100,000 annually. Peerless also outfitted one of their route delivery trucks with reusable totes instead of disposable cardboard cartons.