Clean

You might have to break eggs to make an omelet, but you don’t have to make a mess to make a floor. New technologies have allowed us to reduce pollution without reducing performance. In fact, we’ve been so successful that in the last year we were awarded the National Pollution Prevention Roundtable’s 8th Annual MVP2 (Most Valuable Pollution Prevention) Award and the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Award for Source Waste Reduction and Resource Management. Here’s part of what we did:

Water-based Inks and Incinerators

For years, all rotogravure printing used solvent-based inks. These inks not only contained solvents, but required yet more solvents to clean the presses between runs. These solvents produced both volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and waste – and posed a fire hazard. We started by switching to water-based inks, but they still contained a small amount of alcohol, requiring the vapors to be incinerated before being vented to the outside. While an improvement, this still required a considerable amount of energy.

Our chemists along with our valued ink suppliers worked and reworked the ink formulations, and eventually we were able to formulate ultra-low VOC inks that needed no incineration. We save significant energy, and have reaped the added bonus that the new inks outperform older formulations both in use and storage. This created added savings in product and ink waste.

Pond Remediation

Once upon a time, manufacturing latex-backed carpet created sludge. This sludge sat in containment ponds. New latex formulations don’t create the same sludge, but the old waste product was still sitting there in the same ponds. These latex ponds were next to natural streams, and over time had attracted a population of snakes and turtles. We – and state and local officials – knew the latex wasn’t contaminating the streams, but we also knew we shouldn’t leave the waste there. We found an environmental waste treatment company to help, captured, cleaned and relocated the snakes and turtles, and returned the area to its natural condition.

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