Back to Top

Planning For Our Future

Over 100 farming families own our cooperative and nurture over 15,000 acres of fruit orchards. From the very beginning, Knouse Foods and our farmers have served as stewards of the environment. It’s how we ensure that clean water and soil can help the orchards grow for future generations of farmers. It’s how delicious fruit from our trees reaches family tables year after year.

In addition to meeting or exceeding the latest environmental regulations, we also look ahead and apply new approaches to reduce packaging, ingredient, and product waste. Explore the sustainability methods we put into practice every day.

Sustainability Spotlight: Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay 2022 Forests Program

Energy Initiatives

Energy Initiatives

  • Residual steam from our wastewater treatment facility provides 45% of the energy demand of the Peach Glen plant.

  • Five of our production plants use boilers modified to run on recycled motor oil—as much as the equivalent of 2.4 million car oil changes each year.

  • Our Orrtanna plant generates much of its own electricity with the help of a natural gas-fired jet turbine engine. Waste heat from the jet engine then makes steam for processing lines and eliminates the need for another fuel-burning boiler.

  • Our clean-fuel fleet trucks drive on a blend of soybean-based biodiesel fuel.

Over 14,000 solar panels cover 19 acres and deliver 31% of the power to our Peach Glen plant.

Water Initiatives

Water Initiatives

  • 160 million gallons of water from 6 processing plants irrigate nearby fields and re-enters the local watershed annually.

  • A wastewater treatment facility at the Peach Glen plant processes 45 million gallons of water per year and returns it to the local water table.

  • Improvements on our fresh apple, cherry, and peach processing lines save more than 5 million gallons of water per year.

Six million pounds a year of our apple pomace (the pressed apple material from juice production) is repurposed locally as livestock feed.

Production Initiatives

Production Initiatives

  • We use only repairable apple bins in the fall harvests. Each year, nearly 200,000 wood bins and 100,000 recyclable plastic bins are repaired and returned to the growers’ orchards for the next year.
  • Practically every part of the apple is used to make delicious products for your family. Peels and cores from apple sauce production are sent to the cider mills for juice pressing. And tiny, grade-out apples from the slicers get slow-cooked in kettles for apple butter.
  • Our packaging and box designs have evolved to greatly reduce the amount of wasteful cardboard needed to ship Musselman’s products to grocery stores.
  • All cardboard in our packaging is 30%, consumer-recycled board.

The 2021 Environmental Stewardship Award included Citations from the PA House of Representatives, the PA Senate, and the Adams County Commission. 

Planting and Soil Initiatives

Planting and Soil Initiatives

  • Our growers continually use innovative orchard planting practices like trellising to reduce their environmental footprint while increasing yield per acre.
  • To protect our local natural environments, we constructed a wetland area at our Peach Glen property and a grassy waterway at the Biglerville site.

Ponds originally created for fire protection of the Orrtanna Plant are now open to public fishing through several cooperative programs: Mummasburg Sportsmen’s Club - Trophy Trout Program, Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission - Cooperative Trout Nursery Program and Mentoring Day, and Adams County Fish & Game Club - Trout Nursery Operation

Delicious Fruit Products

From Apple Sauce, to Fresh Pressed Apple Cider, to Premium Fruit Fillings, find a product your family will love.

Our Products

Knouse Careers

We are always searching for great people to join our family. You can check here for current jobs openings.

Job Listings