Lima, Ohio, fabric care plant honored with Sonoco Sustainability Star Award.
Sonoco, a diversified packaging company based in Hartsville, South Carolina, has named a Procter & Gamble (P&G) fabric care plant in Lima, Ohio, a gold-level Sonoco Sustainability Star Award recipient its successful efforts to achieve landfill-free status.
In 2014, P&G’s Lima facility announced a plan to become the first fabric care plant in North America to earn the designation of zero waste to landfill. The facility, which achieved its goal Jan. 1, 2015, today recycles more than 97 percent of its waste and ships the remainder in specially made boxes to a waste-to-energy facility operated by Covanta, Morristown, New Jersey. P&G says the boxes have been built to accommodate the plant’s compactor equipment and to minimize the carbon footprint and economic impact of the shipments.
“This is a truly innovative program and partnership among Sonoco, Covanta and P&G, delivering outstanding results by keeping waste from landfill and turning nonreusable waste into energy,” says Scott Burns, associate director leading P&G’s global asset recovery purchases organization. “A lot of effort went into this program, with every component of waste being analyzed and successfully solutioned.”
Administered by Sonoco Recycling, the company’s recycling business, the Sonoco Sustainability Star Awards program comprises three tiers:
- Gold recognizes facilities that have achieved 99 percent landfill diversion;
- Silver is awarded to facilities achieving 95 percent landfill diversion; and
- Bronze recognizes facilities that have made significant waste reduction achievements, such as drastically reducing their waste streams or implementing a new composting system.
Sonoco Recycling annually collects more than 3 million tons of old corrugated containers (OCC) and other grades of paper, metals and plastics. The company operates five material recovery facilities (MRFs), serving more than 125 communities in which curbside-collected residential and commercial materials are processed. Sonoco Recycling says it also operates recycling programs that identify waste reduction opportunities, reducing operating expenses for many of the largest consumer product companies in the United States.