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Industrial Impact and Countermeasures

allloutmx

Titanium
Joined
Mar 6, 2013
Location
Rochester, NY
Not looking to start an Environmental debate, rather I'd like to hear from people who have taken the time to eliminate waste, re-use materials that can be, Etc Etc... I have started a small program at my day job to help decrease the negative impact our company has on the environment. One example is we now have several vendors to recycle and reuse our plastic endmill cases and insert cases. So far Ive recycled around 40 lbs of tubes since May.

Thank You
:cheers:
 
Not looking to start an Environmental debate, rather I'd like to hear from people who have taken the time to eliminate waste, re-use materials that can be, Etc Etc... I have started a small program at my day job to help decrease the negative impact our company has on the environment. One example is we now have several vendors to recycle and reuse our plastic endmill cases and insert cases. So far Ive recycled around 40 lbs of tubes since May.

Thank You
:cheers:

I'm curious.... Is there no complaining about the labels on those tubes? Or, have they been ink jet printed instead? Also, do you pre-sort? IIRC some insert cases are polycarbonate while most end mill tubes are PE (polyethylene).
 
At my previous job they were filling a dumpster twice a week with packing material. mostly plastic shrink wrap.

There is a local agency here that helps businesses re purpose their waste. The agency will conduct an audit. Mostly looking at what is in the dumpster and figure out what can be recycled and what can go to other local businesses and be used.

Since most of the packing material (some kind of thin foam) was clean it was sent as packing material to another local business. The shrink wrap was recycled.

They are now moving to a zero waste facility.
 
I'm curious.... Is there no complaining about the labels on those tubes? Or, have they been ink jet printed instead? Also, do you pre-sort? IIRC some insert cases are polycarbonate while most end mill tubes are PE (polyethylene).

We have a couple of places that actually reuse the tubes. The recycling centers have ways to remove the labels and Most of our EM tubes are #5 PP. It took a little work to find the appropriate recycling centers, and once I got one of our larger tooling vendors involved, he helped me find a few more outlets that would actually reuse the packaging as is.
 
At my previous job they were filling a dumpster twice a week with packing material. mostly plastic shrink wrap.

I don't know if this continues to hold true from several years ago, but shrink wrap is a HOT item for recycling. I don't recall the type plastic, but when I was working in the local carpet mills there were buyers practically begging for it. BUT, they wanted it clean, i.e. no trash, labels, or other plastics thrown in.
 
you rarely hear environmentalist talk about the need to plant trees or allow them to grow rather than mowing the lawn. they complain about the loss of trees in the Amazon but not do not allow trees to grow in their own backyard
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in the old days they used cardboard boxes and scrap newspaper bunched up or saw dust chips instead of Styrofoam. it all went into the wood burning furnace
 
you rarely hear environmentalist talk about the need to plant trees or allow them to grow

What?

We have a national holiday centered around "Plant a tree, save the world"




@OP, good topic - I think I'll bring this up at the next management meeting I get drug into.

I'm currently redoing the layout of our shipping/receiving and assembly/finishing departments to reduce redundant tooling, redundant consumable locations, and reducing motions and storage requirements. One of the side benefits I brought up was the ability to harvest the 'waste' from the assembly dept and using it for packing material instead of the assy dept packing trash cans full of decently useful stuff. When it goes into a garbage bin you can't typically recover it because it'll be very quickly soaked with oil, soda, tobacco spit, etc, so reclaiming isn't doable. But there isn't room for assy people to have separate bins for everything where they are now.

The one thing most places probably already do, but some still overlook is paper recycling. If you're not a "digital only" shop, you probably generate a shit load of paper. There are companies that'll bring in bins they'll periodically empty, that you can put around the office and shop. If you have 'sensitive' materials, some have a process to keep the documents secure right up to the point they're shredded. A couple of our bins have padlocks for ITAR restricted stuff and the disposal is allegedly acceptable to our auditors. We pretty much just throw all sensitive customer data in those bins and leave the general recycling for the everyday stuff.

We pretty much use Sunnen oil for all uncoated steel parts that get stored/shipped. I wonder if looking at the 'types' of oils would yield a "sustainable/renewable" source that suits the task.
 
planting trees or allowing them to grow is done in many countries. in Sweden i saw many birch and pine planted and many homes had wood furnaces that took whole logs and burned all day. humans can take a forest down in a few weeks that took a 200 years to grow. often see land that even cows are not there to eat the grass. just open land not allowed to let the trees to grow back
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though in Sweden i think maybe they should plant more than 2 types of trees. that why chestnut trees 99% died out and now ash trees are currently being lost
 
What?

We have a national holiday centered around "Plant a tree, save the world"




@OP, good topic - I think I'll bring this up at the next management meeting I get drug into.

I'm currently redoing the layout of our shipping/receiving and assembly/finishing departments to reduce redundant tooling, redundant consumable locations, and reducing motions and storage requirements. One of the side benefits I brought up was the ability to harvest the 'waste' from the assembly dept and using it for packing material instead of the assy dept packing trash cans full of decently useful stuff. When it goes into a garbage bin you can't typically recover it because it'll be very quickly soaked with oil, soda, tobacco spit, etc, so reclaiming isn't doable. But there isn't room for assy people to have separate bins for everything where they are now.

The one thing most places probably already do, but some still overlook is paper recycling. If you're not a "digital only" shop, you probably generate a shit load of paper. There are companies that'll bring in bins they'll periodically empty, that you can put around the office and shop. If you have 'sensitive' materials, some have a process to keep the documents secure right up to the point they're shredded. A couple of our bins have padlocks for ITAR restricted stuff and the disposal is allegedly acceptable to our auditors. We pretty much just throw all sensitive customer data in those bins and leave the general recycling for the everyday stuff.

We pretty much use Sunnen oil for all uncoated steel parts that get stored/shipped. I wonder if looking at the 'types' of oils would yield a "sustainable/renewable" source that suits the task.

Part of the problem I see with trying to create a recycling movement in the workplace, is that management see it as an incurred cost, and by all rights- it usually takes someones time to manage any of the measures you wish to put in place. I levied myself with the burden of taking care of any of the proposals I came up with while my machines run or during my "break time" but I mention this only because its almost absurd to me that companies that net more than 20 million a year cant be bothered to spend a few dollars a day to help the industry be a bit more sustainable.
The other immediate reaction I got at the day job was "whats in it for you?"- pure ignorance. How about the future of my children AND yours.
 
Part of the problem I see with trying to create a recycling movement in the workplace, is that management see it as an incurred cost, and by all rights- it usually takes someones time to manage any of the measures you wish to put in place. I levied myself with the burden of taking care of any of the proposals I came up with while my machines run or during my "break time" but I mention this only because its almost absurd to me that companies that net more than 20 million a year cant be bothered to spend a few dollars a day to help the industry be a bit more sustainable.
The other immediate reaction I got at the day job was "whats in it for you?"- pure ignorance. How about the future of my children AND yours.
.
i have seen people who push too hard to get a company to recycle get laid off or loose their job. got to watch pissing the boss off.
.
they might be making a list of dozens of things you do that make it a reason to get rid of you legally
 
This thread is a good example of the wretched ignorance that besets this nation. One guy says he's saving the fucking world because he saved 40 lbs of plastic in 7 months. Another says "plant trees". Another says "recycle paper"!.
Do any of you think about what you say? 40 lbs of plastic in 7 months? You HAD to spend more energy than you saved. If you had spent that time on real conscous thought you might have had something.
Plant trees? Recycle paper? Get fucking real. These are contadictory. All over South and central Georgia and Alabama you can see clear cut tracts of land for sale. Mostly the seller is International Paper, who bought Union Camp, the largest kraft paper manufacturer in the world. Union camp once employed 5000 people. They did not just make kraft paper, they made the machines that turned it into bags and boxes. Now they are less than 500 people and one major failure will shut the mill for good. Why? because no one is using kraft paper any more. You go to the grocery store and instead of half a dozen paper bags you walk out with a dozen and a half plastic bags. No demand for paper. Union Camp used to have a huge forestry dept to grow those trees on land that they owned or manged. No more.
Here in Arizona we had one paper mill. It converted to recycled paper in an attempt to survive. They are almost done with total scrapping of it. No demand.
You want more trees? Burn every scrap of paper you can get ahold of. It is a renewable resource.
Waste management for a while had signs on their trucks claiming that every year they recycled enough paper to save 3 million trees. In the Southeast they can grow a pine to pulp size in 11 years. That means that they saved 33 million trees. They saved them from being planted.
 
This thread is a good example of the wretched ignorance that besets this nation. .

Welllll not until you showed up.

Never said I was saving the world, but I highly doubt I spent more energy than I saved. Take your next dust pan full of chips and throw them in the garbage. Then tell me how much energy you spend to make that much raw metal again. I don't know why Im bothering to engage you... clearly youre a bit ratarded. Its your pompous ignorant know it all attitude that got us into this mess. Im not asking you to sign up for anything dickwad so why are you shitting in my thread?
 
You HAD to spend more energy than you saved.

Something is almost always better than nothing. But that's another discussion.

You always have to spend more energy than you save, it's called the conservation of energy.
 
This thread is a good example of the wretched ignorance that besets this nation. One guy says he's saving the fucking world because he saved 40 lbs of plastic in 7 months. Another says "plant trees". Another says "recycle paper"!.
Do any of you think about what you say? 40 lbs of plastic in 7 months? You HAD to spend more energy than you saved. If you had spent that time on real conscous thought you might have had something.
Plant trees? Recycle paper? Get fucking real. These are contadictory. All over South and central Georgia and Alabama you can see clear cut tracts of land for sale. Mostly the seller is International Paper, who bought Union Camp, the largest kraft paper manufacturer in the world. Union camp once employed 5000 people. They did not just make kraft paper, they made the machines that turned it into bags and boxes. Now they are less than 500 people and one major failure will shut the mill for good. Why? because no one is using kraft paper any more. You go to the grocery store and instead of half a dozen paper bags you walk out with a dozen and a half plastic bags. No demand for paper. Union Camp used to have a huge forestry dept to grow those trees on land that they owned or manged. No more.
Here in Arizona we had one paper mill. It converted to recycled paper in an attempt to survive. They are almost done with total scrapping of it. No demand.
You want more trees? Burn every scrap of paper you can get ahold of. It is a renewable resource.
Waste management for a while had signs on their trucks claiming that every year they recycled enough paper to save 3 million trees. In the Southeast they can grow a pine to pulp size in 11 years. That means that they saved 33 million trees. They saved them from being planted.

I don't take paper or plastic bags at the grocery store. I got some woven reusable ones that I've been using for a few years now. Sometimes people will give me stuff and deliver it in a plastic bag. I use them as trash can liners in the bathrooms.
 
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i have seen people who push too hard to get a company to recycle get laid off or loose their job. got to watch pissing the boss off.
.
they might be making a list of dozens of things you do that make it a reason to get rid of you legally

WTF?! How is that even relevant? AND you have to be the most paranoid person i see participate in this forum...

This thread is a good example of the wretched ignorance that besets this nation. One guy says he's saving the fucking world because he saved 40 lbs of plastic in 7 months. Another says "plant trees". Another says "recycle paper"!.
Do any of you think about what you say? 40 lbs of plastic in 7 months? You HAD to spend more energy than you saved. If you had spent that time on real conscous thought you might have had something.
Plant trees? Recycle paper? Get fucking real. These are contadictory. All over South and central Georgia and Alabama you can see clear cut tracts of land for sale. Mostly the seller is International Paper, who bought Union Camp, the largest kraft paper manufacturer in the world. Union camp once employed 5000 people. They did not just make kraft paper, they made the machines that turned it into bags and boxes. Now they are less than 500 people and one major failure will shut the mill for good. Why? because no one is using kraft paper any more. You go to the grocery store and instead of half a dozen paper bags you walk out with a dozen and a half plastic bags. No demand for paper. Union Camp used to have a huge forestry dept to grow those trees on land that they owned or manged. No more.
Here in Arizona we had one paper mill. It converted to recycled paper in an attempt to survive. They are almost done with total scrapping of it. No demand.
You want more trees? Burn every scrap of paper you can get ahold of. It is a renewable resource.
Waste management for a while had signs on their trucks claiming that every year they recycled enough paper to save 3 million trees. In the Southeast they can grow a pine to pulp size in 11 years. That means that they saved 33 million trees. They saved them from being planted.

Double WTF!?! ^^
 
We recycle something like 15,000lbs of cardboard a month. We also reclaim about 5000 gallons of oil per year. We recycle all our paper waste. (Well, mostly... we have the bins, but plenty still gets thrown away). We actually got an award from the county for our environmental efforts, and I think our corporate goal is to recycle 95% of our waste by 2017 or something like that. They had a powerpoint put together with all the statistics, but I haven't watched it in awhile, so these numbers are off the top of my head.
 
my old company had 3 powerplants and one was just for burning paper.
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then they said is was cheaper to bury it in a landfill rather than burn it within pollution control laws. then of course the epa wanted wells dug to monitor the ground water pollution.
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problem i see is if everybody put their own garbage in their own backyard they would not be so willing to just bury it.
 
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problem i see is if everybody put their own garbage in their own backyard they would not be so willing to just bury it.

I bet if you were forced to bury your trash in the backyard you'd be a lot more cognizant of what you threw in the trash can and what could be recycled/reused
 








 
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