Recycling, it makes cents

By Charles Sowell  

JANUARY 7, 2012 1:37 p.m. (0)

Greenville’s International Automotive Components Group plant has lowered its cost for handling waste material from more than $20,000 per month to about $1,500 by going green.

“It’s good for the environment and the bottom line,” said Guy Current, plant manager. “Our line workers played a tremendous part in this and had input from the beginning.”

Companywide, since 2010, when the corporate fathers decided to start the green initiative the company has cut 36 million pounds of materials going to landfills.

“We were averaging 452 tons of landfill waste per month,” said Scott Delorme, the plants environmental impact manager. “We’re putting out about four to five tons now.”

Much of that waste goes to reprocessors who use the material for things like waste to energy, generating electricity by burning the plant’s byproducts, Delorme said.

“Recycling at this level requires a lot more work from our personnel,” said Delorme. “Our employees are all veterans (average service is 22 years) and they really bought into this whole process. In fact many of them have signed up for recycling programs in their homes.”

The bottom line, so far as the Greenville plant is concerned, is zero waste going to landfills.

Recycling at this level, a major manufacturing plant requires work on the part of management, too, said Delorme.

“Just scheduling trucks to transport the waste that we send to reprocessors can be tough logistically,” he said. “Used to be we’d just make a call to our local hauler and they’d be here quickly to take it away.

“Now, with some of our reprocessors as much as six hours away, it’s not that simple. We have to plan better to keep things efficient.”

Current, 37, manages both the Greenville plant and the plant at Old Fort, N.C. He’s a graduate of the University of North Carolina and is a career company employee. Both plants have achieved zero landfill waste status.

“Frankly, it’s a lot easier in other kinds of facilities to get to zero landfill waste,” said Delorme, 41, a native of Canada. “There is a robust market for scrap metal and for plastics, for instance. Here we had to really look hard for reprocessors.

The Greenville plant makes carpets and acoustic materials for the automotive industry.

“Those synthetic materials are harder to sell on the scrap market,” said Current. “But when you consider waste to energy the payback can be huge environmentally; less coal mining for one thing.”

Current and his staff started the drive for zero waste by partnering with the Greater Greenville Sanitation District. “Those folks are first class and can help any plant reduce its waste output,” Current said.

Once word came down from corporate on the companywide push, the Greenville plant and others in the area held a series of Kaizen-focused (efficiency) events, said Delorme, and brought their waste output down quickly.

Data from the Greenville plant shows the output of waste dropped from 210.5 tons per month to 30.5 tons in the first month of the full-scale program. That figure has been halved since then to 14 to 15 tons.

“With these efforts, (the company) has fostered a culture of social and environmental responsibility at all of our facilities in the U.S.,” said Maurice Sessel, senior vice president of product engineering.  “These initiatives reinforce our alignment with and commitment to customers as we develop new materials to help them with their environmental initiatives as well.”

2010 sales were $3.7 billion. The company operates 76 manufacturing facilities in 16 countries.  The company employs approximately 22,000 people around the world and is headquartered in Luxembourg.