INKCYCLE PUTS WASTE TO WORK

[Anonymous]

http://www.industryweek.com/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=17319&SectionID=2
Putting Waste to Work
Forget the landfill. Manufacturers are getting better at finding ways to reuse their waste.
Oct. 
2008  — With many manufacturing organizations in hot pursuit of lean
initiatives or corporate sustainability — or both — waste is on the
run. By definition, lean proponents are taking actions to drive waste
out of the manufacturing processes. And for companies aiming to shrink
their impact on the environment, generating less waste and better waste
management strategies are sure-fire ways to help meet that goal.

Print Cartridges Get New Life
For
InkCycle, a remanufacturer of toner and print cartridges, one could
argue that it is inherently green in that it reuses spent cartridges
that might otherwise end up in a landfill. That’s certainly true, at
least in part, says Brad Roderick, executive vice president. “At the
end of the day, we are rebuilding on somebody else’s trash.” He points
out, however, that even remanufactured products at some point reach the
end of their usable life.

InkCycle, an ink and toner cartridge
remanufac-turer, has instituted measures to reduce the amount of waste
it generates, including implementing a water filtration process for
wastewater.
InkCycle’s waste-reduction effort is part of an overall
business model that aims to be sustainable. For example, the company is
converting its gasoline-powered automotive fleet to hybrid vehicles;
pursues a “print less, save the planet” internal campaign; and it has
changed many of its manufacturing operations from five shorter days to
four longer days to reduce energy usage. On the toner cartridge side,
the company has found ways to modify the manufacturing process to reuse
the original components a greater number of times. Environmentally
friendlier, for sure, but also a cost savings, Roderick notes.

The
financial side of sustainability is something Roderick emphasizes. For
sustainability to have long-term momentum, “it has to be based on
financial considerations,” he says. Introducing more efficient climate
control systems that also lower operational expenses over the long
term, for example, fit the bill.

The company’s waste-reduction
efforts include an on-site wastewater treatment facility to treat the
huge amounts of water and steam needed to thoroughly clean and prepare
used inkjet cartridges for remanufacturing. It was introduced both
because InkCycle “wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing”
and as a defensive strategy, Roderick says. He notes that while the
company was easily meeting environmental guidelines prior to the
treatment facility, legislation could change and rewrite those rules.
InkCycle wanted to be ahead of any new regulations.

The
wastewater treatment process used by InkCycle is called
electrocoagulation. Describing it in simple terms, Roderick says that
as wastewater passes through the treatment system, chemicals and solid
materials are “shocked” out of the system using electricity and
chemistry, with the sediment falling to the bottom of a holding tank.
The sludge goes to an EPA-licensed disposal site, while some of the
treated water then can be reused in the cleaning process of the used
inkjet cartridges.

InkCycle recently introduced a new product
line called Grenk, which the company says extends its efforts to
reduce, reuse and recycle products that might otherwise end up in
landfills. The company has developed a new use for Grenk’s plastic
cartridge housings once they have reached the end of their reusable
life. It’s as fuel, but not for InkCycle. Instead the company worked
with LaFarge North America and its subsidiary Systech Environmental
Corp. to turn those plastic housings into fuel for the production of
cement.

These Torit filters are made from 100% recycled General Motors filters and paint.
“What
they need in the production of cement is a lot of heat. The way they
generate that is typically through the burning of fossil fuels, so
[they want] material that is of high BTU value,” Roderick says. Given
the petroleum-based nature of plastic, InkCycle’s Grenk cartridges
proved to be a viable candidate to help the cement furnaces offset some
of the fossil fuel needs. The cartridges are disassembled and shredded
before they are used as fuel.

The entire Grenk production and
packaging process has been developed with environmental sustainability
in mind, as well. Indeed, InkCycle says the packaging boxes are made
from the highest available content of recycled material and are
chain-of-custody certified. Shredded paper in the boxes are the test
prints run from each cartridge before they ship. Additional measures
help assure that no part of the Grenk product line need end up in a
landfill. Of course, a little customer participation is required. “But
we make it very easy for them to return [used cartridges].”

InkCycle
is quick to admit that attracting new customers is a big driver behind
its introduction of Grenk, even as it pursues a sustainable business
model. Roderick explains that not only are there thousands of companies
that remanufacture printer cartridges, making it a commodity purchase,
but also many companies are resistant to even contemplating the
purchase of aftermarket products. “But when we learn they have an
environmental initiative, it’s one call to the person in charge of
their environmental initiative and… there’s almost a 100% opportunity
rate of going in and talking to those companies about the green side
and the financial side of [remanufactured cartridges].”InkCycle
calculates it has kept 225 tons of waste materials out of landfills
through its reuse and recycling efforts in the past year.

Taking Knowledge to China
The
heavily regulated lead acid battery industry has a well-established
closed-loop recycling program that has led to significant reclaiming
and reuse of spent batteries. Manufacturer Johnson Controls estimates
that it and its supply-chain partners recapture 95% to 98% of the lead
weight in spent batteries, which is reprocessed for use in new
automotive and marine batteries, and more than 70% of the resin, which
also finds its way into new batteries. Sulfuric acid, another component
of lead acid batteries, primarily is treated in a wastewater treatment
plant and neutralized, or it can be processed into sodium sulfate for
use by other industries.

Still, the company looks to improve
those yields. “It’s improvements in technology that continue to allow
us to find more and more yield opportunities to get higher yields out
of the plastic recapture, out of the lead recapture, and looking for
new and different ways to recapture sulfuric acid as it becomes a much
more expensive commodity,” says Brian Kesseler, Johnson Controls’ vice
president and general manager of power solutions for the Americas.
Improvements in technology have led to the introduction of the
PowerFrame manufacturing process, which the company says is more
efficient, generates less scrap and requires less lead for the
batteries.

Johnson Controls is sharing its best practices in
closed-loop battery recycling with China. In the summer of 2007, the
company toured smelters in Europe and North America with Chinese
government officials and discussed how the entire recycling process
works. “We were really up front with the Chinese government to help
them learn some best practices that the markets in the U.S. and western
Europe have spent years refining,” Kesseler says.

[Author]

October 14, 2008 at 12:02 PM