Stonyfield Farm opened for business in 1983 with just seven cows, two families and one important principle: Do not harm the planet. Early recycling efforts started simply, with donations of waste yogurt to nearby pig farms, and used buckets to local bee farmers for honey collection. As the company grew, this drive for sustainable practice took on much wider scope, with more sophisticated permutations. The Stonyfield of today ferments a culture of proactive environmental change.

Stonyfield is a recognized leader in production efficiency, with a plant-wide energy monitoring system that recovers waste heat and an anaerobic digester in its wastewater pretreatment facility that generates electricity. Stonyfield is even trying to downsize its dairy cows' carbon footprint by feeding them grains rich in omega-3s to reduce burps — and methane emissions. The company's latest moves on the sustainability front are some of its boldest yet. By replacing industry-standard plastic lids with foil and recycling customers' used cups into Preserve toothbrushes, Stonyfield has its sights set squarely on conventional plastic packaging.

In 2010, Stonyfield went so far as to eliminate petroleum-based plastics in its multipack yogurt cups altogether, replacing them with PLA (polylactic acid) plastic made from corn. “This reduces our greenhouse gas emissions during cup production by 48%,” says Nancy Hirshberg, vice president of natural resources at the Londonderry, New Hampshire-based company. “We're usually happy if we can get 5% improvement.”

The move thrusts Stonyfield, however, into a contentious debate, as 85% of corn grown in the United States is now genetically modified (GM). PLA can be made from numerous sources, including beets, sugar cane and tapioca, but Cargill, the only U.S. producer of PLA, sticks with corn. “When we first started looking at PLA, I said there was no way I would do it unless we addressed the GM issue,” says Hirshberg.

That awareness brought Hirshberg to Working Landscapes, a program developed by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) in Minneapolis. Farmers who grow corn for Working Landscapes receive premiums for agreeing to use non-GM seed varieties, and refraining from use of certain mutagenic chemicals, including atrazine. Program farmers must also adopt sustainable practices, such as crop rotation, and retain at least 70% of crop residue on the field to promote fertility and soil protection.

While it's not quite as rigorous a standard as organic, “We saw this as a way to go in-between — to get commodity farmers engaged in an environmentally preferable method,” says Jim Kleinschmit, director of IATP's rural communities program. “There was a choice to make,” says Hirshberg. “Is it better to move U.S. farmers to non-GM or to buy products overseas that are non-GM? We feel really good about moving our farmers to more sustainable practices.”

Stonyfield decided it would need 1.7 million pounds of PLA annually to convert its cups to PLA, or about 500 acres worth of corn, according to Hirshberg. “We paid $37,000 to IATP for the certificates on this land,” she says. “They gave about $30,000 of that directly to the farmers. That was key for us.”

Kleinschmit acknowledges that 500 acres is small potatoes in the world of commodity farming, but it's a start, and it's a statement. “Having a company like Stonyfield come forward and say — ‘We will support this purchase of bioplastics only if it also supports better farming practices’ — that's critical to making bioplastics part of our sustainability solution,” he says. “It really sets a bar for manufacturers.”

Kleinschmit and Hirshberg readily concede that, as an offset program, Working Landscapes has no way to ensure that the corn inside a Stonyfield cup is entirely non-GM. All of the corn goes into the same Cargill facility, so if consumers scrape away at the bottom of their yogurt cups for that last drop of sustenance, might they unknowingly ingest GM corn? “We've heard from all the researchers,” says Kleinschmit, “and they see no issues with the end material.” That's because corn is converted to lactic acid to make the plastic, and as it goes through the necessary heating and bacterial fermentation processes, genetic material is destroyed. “We feel comfortable that there is no migration or health concern, or we would not have gone forward with this,” says Hirshberg.

With this award, NBJ applauds Stonyfield for tackling a complex issue and for making a practical decision for sustainability in the face of imperfect choices. Besides, the indirect tarnish of GM corn might be little more than stopgap. Hirshberg expects that within five or 10 years, it will become economically feasible to produce cellulosic — plastic from non-food plants, such as switchgrass — on a large scale. When that happens, Stonyfield can switch gears and make an even more definite statement for sustainable packaging.

For now, Hirshberg stays realistic. “Until we change our policies around corn in the United States,” she says, “I don't know if any sugars will ever compete. We make corn so darn cheap. Stonyfield will continue to work on corn policy. That's certainly something we're exploring.”