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Connie Gill
07-09-2010, 11:43 PM
Hello all!
I am a relative newby posting but read several threads faithfully and appreciate the huge brain tank on this forum. My day job is for a corrugated container plant - a box plant. We are in south central Idaho, not near any large metro areas, in the middle of Idaho Potato country. My plant is wanting to begin an environmental stewardship team that will hopefully work within our small community to take responsibility of the foot prints we leave behind.
I would like some ideas to take to the team that will have a little more impact than saving aluminum cans or recycling the newspaper...hey we are in the paper business - we recycle paper! I will welcome all ideas!

Greg Peterson
07-10-2010, 1:53 AM
Just throwing stuff at the wall here, without knowing anything about the facility some ideas may not be applicable or appropriate.

Energy audit.

Insulate for heat loss in winter, AC loss in summer.

While solar may be inadequate for industrial machinery, it can be used to augment offices, office equipment.

Landscaping that provides habitat for birds and assorted small furry things.

Can rain water/snow melt be utilized in industry or grey water applications?

Upgrade lighting fixtures?

Dan Mages
07-10-2010, 6:56 AM
Skylights may be an option to reduce lighting needs.
Bathroom fixtures that reduce water consumption

Jason Roehl
07-10-2010, 7:41 AM
Waste not, want not!

My grandparents lived through the Great Depression, and my folks were born during WWII. Some of the wisdom gleaned from the tough times of the '30s (my grandparents lived in northern South Dakota) has been handed down through the generations. I just can't believe how wasteful we are, as individuals, in this day and age. So much gets thrown out when it has plenty of useful life left. Electronics are probably the worst--they're obsolete before you get home from the store.

Heck, one of the things I (and now my wife, too) have always done is we wash and re-use Ziploc bags until they're absolutely worn out.

Unfortunately, there is some question as to whether our current systems of recycling are even worthwhile. Curbside pickup is horribly inefficient, at one end of the scale, but I'm sure recycling within industry has better payoffs.

Mitchell Andrus
07-10-2010, 8:13 AM
Impact.... go to the grade schools with a show-and-tell and take a booth at the next county fair. There are any number of programs you can find and adapt to the particulars of your area. Get in touch with the state university. A student or two will find this kind of outreach program satisfying and maybe even credit-worthy.
.

Scott Shepherd
07-10-2010, 8:29 AM
When I worked in a plant in the UK about 15-20 years ago, I was amazed how there were no lights on in hallways, conference rooms, etc. Then you'd walk into those rooms or hallways and the lights would come on. All the lights in those areas were motion controlled so they didn't waste energy when not being used. 15-20 years ago I wondered why something so simple hadn't been adopted nationwide in companies. 15-20 years later, it's still rare to see.

So many things you can do. Of course none of it's cheap. Motion controlled lights, water faucets, things like that are things I think of that will have an impact.

David Weaver
07-10-2010, 8:50 AM
Pelletize your paper waste, sell it for fuel.

Connie Gill
07-12-2010, 8:48 AM
THANKS GUYS! So many great ideas! I knew I would get some good feedback off here. Thanks again.

Brian Elfert
07-12-2010, 8:53 AM
Heck, one of the things I (and now my wife, too) have always done is we wash and re-use Ziploc bags until they're absolutely worn out.


Is it really worth the effort to reuse plastic bags? Why not put the stuff in reusable plastic containers that are easier to clean?

My grandmother reused plastic bags and it was disgusting. She never got the bags very clean from the first use. I never really liked eating at her house because of things like this.

Zach England
07-12-2010, 8:54 AM
humanure (google it)

Matt Meiser
07-12-2010, 9:14 AM
You might look into ISO 14001 certification. Its the environmental equivalent of ISO 9001.

Energy Management is an emerging technology to help you find places to reduce energy usage overall, and manage when you use energy to reduce demand etc. It involves instrumenting your plant with power and other utility meters and implementing software to read the meters and potential tie back to the controls on your equipment.

An energy audit by someone who knows manufacturing. Your local utility may offer a program, but they may look more at your building than your process, and many manufacturing operations use (and waste) a lot more energy in their process than the facility. For example, if you have a bank of large compressors, almost guaranteed there is significant waste there.

Scott Shepherd
07-12-2010, 6:33 PM
Also look into the LEED certification process. Not saying you could get it since it's already an existing building, but there are some excellent tips in there, things like how many parking spaces allowed for a certain number of people, parking spaces for carpool cars, and a ton of other easy to do, useful steps to take.

John Coloccia
07-12-2010, 7:35 PM
Where do most of your co-workers live? Close by? Encourage carpooling. Encourage biking in. Do you have a shower, lockers, etc? Any chance of doing a 9/80 style schedule where you have every other Friday off? This energy AND it's something most employees love.

Connie Gill
07-12-2010, 9:41 PM
Hello All,

John - Unfortunately most of our people live 5 - 50 miles away, I would say on average it is probably about 15-25. Some that live close enough do bike, we don't have showers, etc so that isn't an issue. The plant basically heats itself in the winter...the "wet end" (where the three/five liners are glued together) is usually around 105 degrees year round. We have very little humidity so that is a plus. In the summer we have huge vinyl tubes that vent air through the plant - not very well but there is no way to air condition the facility. We recycle all of our paper waste - white paper (office) included but with the SFI initiative it is becoming harder to do that. We are by chance practicing a 4 day work week most of the time, we run as long as we need to to get the boxes out to meet our customers needs. Lately, that has been a lot of 4 day weeks.
Scott-I will definitely look into the LEED certification.
This is a guantlet thrown down by our corporate group to 6 plants in the west...of course we would like ours to be the leader.

Thanks again for the wonderful ideas...I will keep you posted on how we are doing.

Jason Roehl
07-12-2010, 10:21 PM
Is it really worth the effort to reuse plastic bags? Why not put the stuff in reusable plastic containers that are easier to clean?

My grandmother reused plastic bags and it was disgusting. She never got the bags very clean from the first use. I never really liked eating at her house because of things like this.

Generally, we just do this with dry goods or frozen goods. Bags that have had raw meat in them go in the trash. We're also not "old" yet. ;) I'm not a germophobe in general, and I think as a result, my immune system is in pretty good shape.

We do also reuse plastic containers--peanut butter "jars" are great for storing screws and nails, I keep my coffee filters in a Cool Whip container, etc.

Reduce, reuse, recycle!

Jim Koepke
07-13-2010, 2:07 AM
This depends on how far one wants to go with this.

You could make the area a regional recycling center, thus creating jobs and industry in the area.

Google > van der Linde's amazing recycling machine <

interesting article should be the first hit.

155742

jim

Jim Koepke
07-13-2010, 2:12 AM
I just looked at the second hit on the Van der Linde Google and it looks like he might be giving the regular trash haulers a run for their money too.

jim

Scott Shepherd
07-13-2010, 9:09 AM
Connie, try here :

http://www.buildinggreen.com/menus/leedList.cfm

Look at the section on "LEED for existing buildings". It's not the clearest website, as each "certification" is just a small sentence so it can look a little vague at times, and some of it's cryptic, you just have to click on things and see what they say, but there's some excellent advice in there, like changing the landscaping plants out to things that don't require daily watering. There are dozens and dozens of them that are mapped across all aspects of the existing building, so have a good look when you get time.

Myk Rian
07-13-2010, 9:46 AM
Does your plant use compressed air? Have maintenance form a team to hunt down, and fix, air leaks. You'll be amazed at the savings.

Horton Brasses
07-13-2010, 12:00 PM
Start simple and cheap, gradually working your way up the chain. We do all of the things mentioned below:

Reuse inbound packing materials whenever possible. Bags, boxes, peanuts, etc.

Ask employees to bring in old newspapers for packing material-if relevant.

Scrap paper and junk mail: We turn it all over and use the backside to take orders, notes, etc. Only when both sides are used to do we recycle it.

Adjust every computer so the monitor turns off after a set period of inactivity.

Check and repair any leaking water fixtures.

Replace old light fixtures with new fluorescent ones.

See if insulating window shades can be used.

None of the above are going to get articles in the paper about your company, but they are real simple ways to reduce your footprint. Not only that, but they all will help make your company more profitable.

Roger Newby
07-13-2010, 4:37 PM
www.arborday.org They might have some good tips for you.

Gordon Harner
07-14-2010, 5:53 PM
It has been a long time since I have been in a plant that works with paper. But there almost always is a high water usage and accompanying boiler heating component. An energy audit would evaluate the water heating, pipe insulation, and heat transfer during the manufacturing. An evaluation of water usage and treatment processes could be very effective.

Brian Elfert
07-14-2010, 9:25 PM
Adjust every computer so the monitor turns off after a set period of inactivity.


My employer has done this, but the workstation folks have taken it to an even further level. They have changed the background color for Windows to black. The claim is it saves money by taking less energy to display black. The thing is most computers are not displaying the background most of the time. I think the real reason is to override color changes and wallpaper users have installed.

98% of our monitors are LCD so we're saving far more energy from that change than from changing the background color in Windows. I would doubt we save more than $10 to $20 a year company wide with 100s of monitors.

Jason Roehl
07-14-2010, 10:05 PM
Because of the way LCD monitors work, an all-black screen is using no less power than an all-white screen, unless it's black because it's off. All-black may even use slightly more power because it means that all the pixels are turned on, thus blocking the backlight (I'm not 100% certain on that aspect).

Ed Harrow
07-14-2010, 10:44 PM
Waste not, want not!

...
Heck, one of the things I (and now my wife, too) have always done is we wash and re-use Ziploc bags until they're absolutely worn out.

...

That reminds me, there's a bunch of washed ziplock bags hanging behind me, got to put them away!

Jim King
07-15-2010, 2:53 PM
Having lived in developing poor countries more than half of my life I am more surprized every time I visit the US at the waste created. Our most recent having lived more than the last 25 years in the Amazon after Africa for 8 years you learn that the poorer the people the less that goes to waste and the less there is to waste.

The developed countries like the US have simply created a living style that looks to be unsustainable. We live several hundred miles from the nearest road in a city of almost 500,000 and "nothing" is wasted. Iquitos, Peru

You all just have to much money and time and toys.