October 2022 - 32

PRODUCTION
Driving Sustainability
at Westerlay Orchids
Reducing the operation's carbon footprint is top priority for second-generation
owner Toine Overgaag.
BY ABBY McGARRY
W
esterlay Orchids has made quite the mark in Carpinteria,
California. What started as a rose operation when Joop Overgaag
immigrated from the Netherlands in the late 1970s has now
become an orchid powerhouse, growing more than 4 million orchids annually.
Owner and President Toine Overgaag took over the family business in 2009
and continues to drive the operation forward as the second generation. He's
currently developing a new facility and looking at other crops for long-term
expansion, all while having his eyes set on a carbon-neutral operation.
GPN caught up with Toine to discuss the company's forward-thinking
sustainability efforts.
GPN: I want to start with maybe the broadest question possible. Why
are you focused on a sustainable growing operation at Westerlay Orchids?
Toine Overgaag: Put everything on the table that's out there that we
should be concerned about as people, and I think that climate change is the
existential threat. We can just kind of pretend it's not there, or we can in our
own little way try to change, improve and maybe even inspire others as well.
Sustainability to address climate change and environmental impact is
extraordinarily important, and I think talking about it and being deliberate
and bold about where you want to go is important to set something out on
the horizon to continue to make improvements and changes.
32 OCTOBER 2022 GPNMAG.COM
That's the big picture for me personally and I think for our company and
what our core values are as a business. I'm a big believer in incremental
change and incremental improvement, to set a big goal on the horizon and
work toward it steadily over a long period of time.
GPN: One of your big goals is to become a carbon neutral operation,
and I know you've already made some changes to reduce your carbon
footprint. What projects have been successful so far?
Overgaag: We're looking really at A) efficiency and B) greater reliance
on electrical, which of course can be generated through renewables. A
project we executed last year was to install solar. At one of our facilities,
we have a solar array of over 560 pounds, which went live September
of last year, and we are somewhere around 95% of our electrical needs
at this facility that we're covering with this system. That's a real direct
carbon footprint reduction.
The idea with our expansion is that we are going to develop a facility
that is going to have a much smaller carbon footprint. Ultimately, carbon
offsets are not the long-term answer, but offsets in the short term are
an element of what we're doing. We're doing some now where we're
helping to fund wind farms in India as an offset for some of the carbon
we use, the idea being that you are supporting the generation of carbon
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October 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of October 2022
