Your Chicago: Testa Produce And Green Energy

(CBS) – In this day and age of environmental efficiency, businesses everywhere are figuring out how they can better utilize eco-friendly technology to improve their companies.

There's one company here in Chicago that is really leading the way when it comes to energy efficiency.

CBS 2's Rob Johnson reports.

At Testa Produce in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, it's not unusual to see lots of green -- as in, vegetables.

But the company's two-year-old, 90,000-square-foot facility is also one of the greenest you will ever see -- as in, eco-friendly. Among its features are a wind turbine, solar panels and a 50,000-square-foot green roof.

Onwer Peter Testa says going green always sounded like a good idea, but sounding and doing are two different things. It took a real commitment.

"I needed a new building. And being a produce company, we're a green company," he says. "So, being renewable energy and a green company, it all kind of fits together."

The enormous wind turbine is the only one in the city. It's responsible for 30 percent of the energy production at the plant.

All told, Testa believes that his green initiative has saved him another kind of green -- lowering costs by 10 percent to 15 percent each year. And then there's Testa's fleet of trucks, some that run on electricity and others on compressed natural gas.

Testa Produce has become quite the tourist attraction for other businesses looking to become more energy efficient. Testa welcomes them all.

"There's nothing proprietary about what I did here, and it's just everybody can do it. It's just a question of what degree do you want to do it," he says.

To learn more about the company and its green efforts, click here.