eegee’s Sustainability

Sustainability: eegee’s-style

Once upon a time, “garbage” was just part of life. Restaurants filled dumpsters with empty boxes, day-old bread, and used metal and plastic containers. In those days, the general belief seemed to be that everything magically vanished once it hit the city dump…but eegee’s knew better—and still does.

eegee’s first began its recycling program in 1987 and ever since then we've found both traditional and creative ways to recycle virtually everything that we use. We strive for to be a zero waste company and continually look for new ways in achieving this. From recycling tens of thousands of cardboard containers to donating over 200,000 loaves of bread a year, eegee’s is making a difference simply by doing what’s right.

How We Do It

Once the 5-gallon pails are emptied of eegee’s food and drink products, they’re cleaned and sold to florists, painters, and other workers at a low price. Thanks to this practice, over 10,000 plastic pails are kept out of landfills every year.

Approximately 40,000 empty french-fry cases a year are either reused for catering or sold to a Phoenix-based used box company.

Approximately 2-million pounds of cardboard a year is fed into on-site hydraulic presses and sold to paper recyclers. All proceeds—nearly $10,000 a year—go to the Casa Maria Free Kitchen here in Tucson, AZ.

In 2011, cardboard recycling alone saved approximately 464,360 gallons of water, 1,973 trees, 40,631 gallons of oil, and 464,360 kilowatts of energy.*

eegee’s donates day-old, homemade bread to the Casa Maria Free Kitchen. In all, nearly 200,000 16-inch loaves are donated to the organization yearly.

Approximately 12,000 pounds of meat and cheese are donated to the Salvation Army each year.

Any food that isn’t used to fill an eegee’s sandwich can often be found in meals at local homeless shelters.

Much of the oil used for french fries is collected and sold to a company that converts it into biodiesel fuel. A portion of oil is also used to power The Physics Bus, a “science museum on wheels” that travels to schools across the nation.

When the eegee's commissary was relocated in 1995, the cooling system was upgraded. Our new 30,000 square foot facility uses an energy efficient "absorption refrigeration" system. Our new commissary, tenfold larger, operates using the same electrical draw as the previous 3,000 square foot warehouse.

Any old or out-of-date eegee’s equipment is stripped of usable metals and sold to scrap metal companies.