EMI Industries Blog

Do you use recycled material? Do you have an energy conservation plan in place and are you adhering to it? Based on the number of these types of questions coming in, Green appears to be the buzz word for 2008. Maybe the presidential candidates have stirred up a greater awareness of the environment. Whatever the reason behind this influx of interest is, saving the earth as we know it for future generations, is certainly a worthwhile endeavor.

For a manufacture, a green initiative covers a wide range of areas from the materials we buy to the energy we use in the manufacturing processes:
• The transportation costs for inbound and outbound freight,
• The amount and type of paper we use in the office
• The amount of scrap we create and what is done with it.

One article on the subject I recently read reduced the ‘greening' of the manufacturing processes down to the three ‘R's:
• Reduce - designing products to use less material which saves resources while reducing weight which can save packaging and transportation costs.
• Reuse - create products that are multifunctional so that one item does the job of several. This also covers maximizing yield from raw materials.
• Recycle - Using materials in our products that can be easily removed and reprocessed rather than taken to a land fill.

Many of the tenants of green manufacturing are common to standard procedures for an efficient, successful operation. Maximizing yield from raw materials, minimizing the time and energy required in fabrication, and recycling the waste produced are all requirements of a low cost producer. Interestingly, material price spikes can benefit the recycling process. Along with the rapid increases we saw in stainless costs last year was a corresponding increase in the value of our scrap stainless. What manufacture isn't going to separate out the various steel, aluminum, plastic, and wood scrap and sell them to recycler's when the alternative is to pay to have them hauled away?

There are a multitude of government and private organizations that certify certain specific areas of green manufacturing but no one overall program. CSA, Eco-Logo, EnergyStar, Environmental Choice, Forest Stewardship Council, Green Seal, Green Spec, GreenGuard all have certification programs that cover their own limited area of interest and expertise. With both wood and metal plants, EMI Industries follows many of the guidelines for being an earth friendly, green manufacture. Most of these are a direct benefit to the bottom line but we also care about the world we are leaving for our children and grandchildren.

In reading up on this I ran across many interesting statistics used to show how wastefully we live our lives. Here are a few ‘by the numbers':
• 424,000 - The number of trees that could be saved if every home in the US replaced just one roll of regular toilet paper with a roll of recycled toilet paper.
• 100,000 - The number of cars that could be fueled for an entire year on the oil used to create the plastic water bottles sold in the US annually.
• 200 - Gallons per week that could be conserved if a family of 4 turned off the water while brushing their teeth.
• 268,600 - The total square miles of Texas and the amount of land that could be covered by the plastic wrap US citizen use annually.