Innovative Zero Waste to Landfill Strategies—Part 1

When companies decide to reduce their wastes and become more sustainable, they often find the task requires critical thinking and novel approaches to how they do business, no matter what that business is. But the rewards can be great not only in cost savings but also in how they are perceived by a very discriminating buying and investing public. Cumulatively, the results can be a huge benefit to the company and the planet.

For example, in December 2013, General Motors (GM) announced that its headquarters, the iconic Detroit Renaissance Center (Ren Cen), was “landfill free.” The 14-acre complex, which has its own zip code and is the tallest all-hotel skyscraper in the western hemisphere, is composed of six towers serving as many as 15,000 people each day. The ZWL program at the Ren Cen involved partnering with 11 other tenants to recycle everything from paper, plastic, and batteries to furniture and mattresses. The results:

• Increased recycling 127% from 2011 rates, and
• Diverted 5 million pounds of trash from landfills in one year (about 200,000 full garbage bags).

Learn how to identify and evaluate external resources that can help you develop and implement an effective and comprehensive universal waste programe during our in-depth webinar on April 16, 2014.
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But that is not the first of GM’s ZWL efforts.  In fact, it was actually the 110th GM facility to make the ZWL grade: 85 manufacturing facilities and 25 nonmanufacturing  facilities. Here are some of the innovative ways GM is going ZWL:

• Recycling 227 miles of the oil-soaked booms used to clean up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill into air-deflecting baffles for the Chevy Volt;
• Recycling cardboard packaging into acoustic padding in headliners for two Buick models;
• Donating scrap sound-absorption material to a local humanitarian for insulating self-heated, waterproof coats that turn into sleeping bags for the homeless;
• Mixing protective plastic caps used during shipment with other  postconsumer plastics to make air deflectors for Chevrolet and GMC pickup trucks;
• Recycling test tires into the manufacturing of air and water baffles for a variety of GM vehicles;
• Reworking pallets to form wood beams for the homebuilding industry;
• Capturing solvents used between paint color changes and reformulating them into a plant floor paint cured and hardened with ultraviolet light;
• Converting scrap Chevrolet Volt battery covers into wood duck, screech owl, and bat-nesting boxes;
• Reusing 250 shipping crates by turning them into raised garden beds for a community garden in a once-abandoned parking lot; and
• Composting food scraps from various facilities to form nutrient-rich organic humus used as natural fertilizer in gardens.

Join us us on April 16 for an in-depth webinar where our expert, a seasoned EHS professional who has helped many companies establish compliant programs for EPA’s universal waste regulations, will provide a tested road map for developing and implementing a cost-effective, compliant universal waste program

Another company thinking way outside the box is Apple® Inc., which has been pioneering new and better ways to build its products, closing the loop on waste for a decade and eliminating toxic components in the process. Among Apple’s many waste-saving innovations are:

• Unibody construction of MacBook and iPad® products that is thinner but more resilient.
• Friction-stir welding that enables the iMac to use 68% less material (and generate 67% less carbon emissions).
• Reengineering secondary materials such as the fan assemblies in the Mac Pro that use advanced materials derived from repolymerized plastic bottles.
• AirPort Express enclosures using biopolymers from industrial-grade rapeseed and recycled PC-ABS.
• Using 30% recycled content in the iMac’s aluminum stand.
• Longer-lasting batteries.
• Packaging designs that use postconsumer  paper pulp fiber and vegetable-based inks for in-box materials.
• A comprehensive and responsible e-waste recycling program using 153 partners worldwide that are evaluated each year and that prohibits e-waste to be disposed of in landfills or incinerators. Since 1994, the program has diverted 151,504 metric tons of equipment from landfills. Notably, the company exceeded its recycling goal of 70% in 2010.