Resource use and recycling

Fletcher Building recognises the economic and environmental benefits that result from more efficient resource use and recycling. Several Fletcher Building operations recycle waste for raw materials or supplementary energy sources.

Recycling at Formica's Evendale, Ohio plant

Formica's largest manufacturing plant based in Evendale, Ohio, has implemented a recycling initiative that makes use of a lot of the majority of its unneeded materials. Since starting up in 2008, it has resulted in savings of at least $USD 350,000 each year.

Paper recycling is the plant's most largest and comprehensive activity.  Paper used as filler (Kraft) is processed in very large volumes, but several tons of paper per day is deemed unusable due to being process damaged, quality rejects or leftover roll stock.  

Before the recycling scheme was introduced, all the plant's waste paper was delivered to a local landfill at a cost of $US700,000 per year. The Formica team decided it was time to become more sustainable and located a paper recycler that was interested in both treated and untreated paper.

During the treating operation at Formica, the paper at Formica phenolic resin and ARC is added for specific chemical property performance.  This posed a problem at the recycling stages however, as treated paper prevents its use in most consumer applications.

The vendor chosen to recycles Formica's paper has the ability to blend the papers in such a way that hides the odour and specifically targets the resultant pulp mix into box applications. The paper is then transported at no cost and blended into a wet pulping process.

The Evendale facility also has a waste boiler that burns wood products.  Mechanisms have also been designed which add sanding dust by-products and scrap laminate to the wood fuel mixture.  As a result, the plant avoids the cost of hauling the products to landfill and allows the boiler generates approximately 9,000 lbs/hr of process steam.

In addition to the paper recycling, Formica has recently begun taking an active approach to scrapping old equipment and machinery.  A load is available most days, which makes good use of second life materials applications.

Other business unit examples

• Pacific Steel uses over 300,000 tonnes of scrap steel in the electric arc furnace. The electric arc furnace process produces steel from scrap using significantly less energy and producing lower CO₂   emissions than the integrated process required when iron ore is used as raw material

• In New Zealand, The Laminex Group uses 137,000 green tonnes of biomass waste as raw material in the manufacture of its panels. This biomass waste would otherwise generate CO₂   /methane emissions from landfills.  The Laminex Group also uses 0.3 PetaJoules of renewable energy from wood waste in New Zealand and 1.7 PetaJoules in its Australian panel plants

• Golden Bay Cement uses flyash as a supplementary cementitious raw material, and wood waste as a supplementary fuel. The cement kiln has capability for converting a variety of other waste streams to energy

• Tasman Insulation derives 80% of the raw materials required for manufacture of glasswool insulation products from recycled glass