Plant Managers – Steps to Reduce Waste in Manufacturing

Let’s talk about ways to reduce waste in manufacturing. “We’re not ISO14001 certified and we don’t make much scrap.”

Maybe, but have you looked in your dumpster lately? (Don’t climb in there! We haven’t talked about confined spaces yet! Wait – is this guy saying a dumpster is a confined space? Focus! We can’t both be easily distracted here.) No matter how efficient your operation is, there are some easy things you can do to reduce waste in your manufacturing operation.

Let’s look at a few things in the plant.

Cardboard

• Almost everything is shipped in cardboard boxes. You may receive raw materials in railcars or bulk trucks, but you still get a bunch of raws, parts, supplies, and material in gaylords and boxes. Are you collecting that cardboard to be recycled? Or is it going to the trash dumpster?
• How about your offices? Their supplies come in boxes too.

Plastic

• If you’re in a plastic facility, how about purge patties, transition material, rejects, and scrap? I’m sure you’re reworking what you can, but the rest? Is it just thrown into the dumpster? There are companies that will pay you for that.

Metal

• Companies will buy metal from you too – they’ll park a dumpster on your site to collect it. Old steel parts, metal enclosures, the metal rings around the top of those fiber drums – that’s metal that can be recycled. It’s probably not worth the time or safety risk to cut the metal part loose from the drum, but the ring is easy.

Paper

• It’s shocking how much paper is generated in a manufacturing site – meeting notes, old document revisions. Most of that can be recycled.
• That blue Recycling bin by the company mailboxes fills up quick! Remember – “Reduce” is a thing too. Are you getting magazines and catalogs addressed to folks that haven’t worked there in years? Or 20 copies of the same magazines? Have somebody call and cancel those!

Breakroom waste

• Plastic bottles and aluminum cans – folks are used to separating recyclables at home – they’ll do it at work.
• Make sure your housekeeping folks know where to dispose of everything and keep it separated.

As always, make it easier to do it right than to do it wrong.

All that recycling, even the plastic, powders, and other scrap, may not be a significant revenue stream, but 1) you’ll get SOMETHING for it, 2) you’re not paying to landfill it (yes, the waste disposal company is weighing your trash), and 3) it’s the right thing to do.

Plus, it boosts your employee engagement.

Just be smart about it; don’t introduce a safety hazard like asking folks to cut those drums apart by hand or stacking gaylords of wet pellets that will fall over.

If you are ISO 14001 certified, here’s a metric you can use – Waste to Landfill (pounds waste per pound of production.) A decreasing number is good. You know what you’re producing each month, and you can get the dumpster weights from your waste vendor. Recycling more means less in the dumpster.

(Note: Tie these type metrics to production – like KWH per Pound of Production for electrical consumption.)
And post those numbers in the breakroom!

Have a good weekend.