Manufacturers Team Up To Reduce Waste
Boyle County’s large manufacturers have long been mindful of environmental conservation, with each plant implementing its own sustainability strategy to reduce waste and energy usage.
Timberland’s Danville distribution center, which handles some 30 million units of footwear and apparel each year, purchases enough green energy credits from Kentucky Utilities to offset its entire carbon footprint, making it the only carbon-neutral Timberland facility. The company also reuses 40 percent of the cardboard boxes it gets in, and it recycles the rest, says John Strothers, senior director of distribution at Timberland.
At Caterpillar, which builds bushings, pins and sleeve bearings for heavy equipment, facility manager Angie Lamere reports monthly on how her plant is meeting Caterpillar’s global sustainability initiatives, including recycling cardboard, concrete, aluminum and scrap metal.
And RR Donnelley, a large commercial printer in Danville that produces publications such as The New Yorker, has had a corporate waste, pollution and water-reduction policy in place for years.
But when plant managers put their heads together, they identified ways to do more – and to help each other out in the process.
The company leaders are part of the Boyle County Industrial Council, which meets monthly to discuss issues of mutual interest. At one of those meetings, a conversation about environmental initiatives evolved into a sort of corporate “freecycling” initiative involving wooden pallets.
While Caterpillar has no problem finding buyers and recyclers for most of the waste it generates, the staff wasn’t sure what to do with the wooden pallets received when materials are shipped in.
When Lamere found out that RR Donnelley was spending money to buy new pallets for shipping, she offered them Caterpillar’s stock.
Now RR Donnelley gets free pallets, and Caterpillar gets to cut its waste haul from 80,000 pounds a month to 7,000 pounds a month, Lamere says. Broken pallets are repaired so they can be reused instead of thrown away.
“It was just talking about what we could do to find a home for these last bits of waste,” says Lamere, who chairs the council. “Out of these meetings, we found a place for the bits.”
Jody Lassiter, president and CEO of Danville-Boyle County Economic Development Partnership, applauds the companies’ initiative and cooperation.
“It shows the value and the strength of our Industrial Council,” Lassiter says.
“They found there were a lot of commonalities, common challenges – even drilling down to the issue of how we reuse wooden pallets. I think it’s one reason why we have a very successful business development climate.”
The group also brought in a guest speaker from Pioneer Vocational/Industrial Services, a local organization that coordinates work opportunities for people with disabilities.
Pioneer offers an industrial recycling service that hauls away cardboard, paper and scrap metal from the companies and sells it to benefit programs for people with disabilities.
The businesses that now utilize Pioneer reduce their own Dumpster haulage costs – and complete the circle by giving back to the community.
Now the group is working on finding a place for the paper dust generated by RR Donnelley as it prints magazines and newspaper inserts.
“We all had corporate initiatives to be green,” Lamere says. “We all had sustainable development strategies. What’s unique in Kentucky is we’re trying to do this as a community of manufacturers.”
Story by Jeannie Naujeck
