The Independent Purchasing Cooperative (IPC), Miami, FL, is the franchisee-owned and operated purchasing organization for Subway, the world’s largest submarine-sandwich franchise. For more than 28,000 restaurants in 86 countries. IPC negotiates the lowest cost for purchased goods and services, while improving quality, enhancing competitiveness, and ensuring value to Subway restaurants and patrons.
“Senior management initiated a sustainability effort at Subway more than two years ago,” says Joel Mesman, packaging technologist, Subway. “Senior managers challenged every department within Subway and IPC to evaluate sustainable options and pursue promising areas of opportunity. Packaging research and development at Subway and packaging procurement at IPC quickly joined forces to carry out this mandate for greater sustainability.”
IPC met with a number of its established suppliers, as well as prospective vendors, and laid out a vision for reducing, reusing, and recycling foodservice packaging. Joe Bowers, director of packaging at IPC, believes that supplier support is essential to the success of a sustainable packaging program. “After meeting with our vendors, we received a steady stream of creative solutions and found genuine enthusiasm for change,” he says. “Suppliers also demonstrated a willingness to change the way they operate their facilities to become more sustainable.”
The cooperative’s first major successes were “greener” compositions for napkins and cutlery. Then a switch from polystyrene to polypropylene for its cold drink cups resulted in an 8 percent material reduction and a savings of 10,000 barrels of oil annually.
