Stonyfield helped build the Rosebud Sioux Tribe’s wind turbine
in South Dakota through NativeEnergy. While Stonyfield Farm’s
efforts in the mid-1990s focused on reducing energy use at our
Yogurt Works, we recognized that despite our best efforts, the
factory was still emitting greenhouse gases (GHGs) via energy
use, thus contributing to climate change. Hearing of an electric
utility that had invested in reforestation projects to “offset”
the GHG emissions from its operations, we set out to learn how
we could do the same for our energy use. As this was more than a
decade before Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth would raise
mainstream awareness of climate change, and hardly anyone had
heard of a “carbon offset,” there were virtually no publicly
available resources on how to offset emissions. With help and
expertise from Mark Trexler, then with Trexler & Associates, in
1997 Stonyfield Farm became the first U.S. manufacturer to
offset the carbon impact of 100% of its facility energy use—both
electricity and heati