With help from Penn State's Pennsylvania Technical Assistance Program (PENNTAP), Creekside Mushrooms, a mushroom grower located in Worthington, Armstrong County, is demonstrating that being both environmentally and energy efficient can help a company's bottom line.

Creekside Mushrooms is the leading mushroom grower on the East Coast and home to Moonlight® brand mushrooms. Moonlight® is recognized around the world for the highest quality white agaricus mushrooms for distribution to supermarket retailers and foodservice/wholesale operators since 1937.

During 2003, Roger Price, senior PENNTAP technical specialist based at Penn State's McKeesport campus, conducted a pollution prevention/energy efficiency (P2E2) site assessment at Creekside. P2E2 specialists from the Electrotechnology Applications Center (ETAC) at Northampton Community College also participated. The Department of Environmental Protection Pollution Prevention/Energy Efficiency Grant Program subsidized the costs of the assessments.

Within three months of implementing some of the recommendations from the December, 2003, P2E2 assessment report, Creekside has reduced its water consumption rate by 30 million gallons per year, lowered electric energy consumption by 350,000 hWh per year, and cut natural gas use by 4,400 MCF per year. The economic benefits from implementing these recommendations are approximately $47,000 per year in savings.

In addition to the annual, recurring economic benefits, the results of the P2E2 assessment also helped Creekside identify options that will produce one time initial savings of $600,000 in the cost of purchasing and installing new equipment for a couple of P2E2 related projects that were already in the process of being evaluated by the company.

9/3/2004