5 examples from companies who produced great work and saw great results.

1. The team turned to partners, such as
Heritage Interactive, to find recyclers
for everything from plastic cups
to steel shavings to
paper products.
ASK THE RIGHT QUESTION
Make 600 cars a day without producing garbage? When Subaru's parent company Fuji
Heavy Industries suggested Denise Coogan and her team get as close as possible to zero
landfill, she took on the challenge.
How do you eliminate all waste from a car
plant the size of six-and-a-half football
fields (3.8 million square feet) that produces
15 TONS OF WASTE
EVERY 24 HOURS?
Team by team, station by
station, her team dumped
trash carts and containers
on the floor, sorting
everything into piles.
Piles of plastic. Piles of steel. Piles of styro-foam,
cardboard, pallets, and everything else.
SEE FOR YOURSELF
2
THE GREAT WORK CHALLENGE:
1
THE RESULTS OF GREAT WORK
A ZERO-LANDFILL FACILITY IN THE MAKING: SUBARU OF INDIANA
Team members looked for new places for all this waste to go.
Waste is just a material that
hasn’t found its use yet.
WHAT CAN BE ELIMINATED:
“Do we really need this thing? Could cardboard
containers be replaced by more reusable containers?
Could steel be saved or cut more efficiently?”
WHAT COULD BE REUSED:
“Could materials be refined and reused again and
again? Styrofoam containers for spark plugs, have
crossed the ocean 20 times to be alternatively emptied,
filled, and emptied again.
WHAT CAN BE RECYCLED:
“Can the cardboard we can’t get rid of get compacted
into blocks that are stacked for recycling? Can the
pallets we can’t reuse get sent off and chipped up
for garden mulch? Can food get composted from
our cafeteria?
“
”
Between shifts containers we’re turned over. Processes
reexamined. Questions asked:
TALK TO YOUR OUTER CIRCLE
3
The processes of reduce, reuse, recycle took the
49 POUNDS OF WASTE GENERATED PER
CAR AND REDUCED IT TO 0.07 POUNDS.
But they weren’t done yet.
IMPROVE THE MIX
4
What else could be improved upon to reach
the goal of 0% landfill? Another partner,
Covanta Energy was tasked to take the final
0.07 pounds and burn it to
generate steam that spins the
giant turbines that help power
downtown Indianapolis.
DELIVER THE DIFFERENCE
5
A car manufacturing plant as large as a small city,
full of machinery, people and raw materials and
producing 600 cars a day was sending less
garbage to the curb then your family does.
AND going landfill free was actually making money. Coogan calculated the
savings in 5 years of not bringing in extra steel and cardboard came to a
$10 million benefit
for the company.