Calgon Carbon Recycles and Saves

"We were getting so much cardboard--it would boggle your mind how
much cardboard we were going through. It was just stacked in
compactors to be crushed and sent to the landfill," explained Buck
Jackson, a member of Calgon Carbon Corporation's Waste Reduction
Committee (WRC). "We went to the company to see if we could start
recycling all this cardboard, and they said 'Sure,' and it started from
there."

Activated carbon

Calgon Carbon's Catlettsburg, Kentucky plant turns coal into activated
carbon for food industry filtering processes. Activated carbon makes
raw sugar white, takes the caffeine out of coffee, and purifies drinking
water. Carbon is activated by feeding coal and pitch into a bowl mill,
where it is ground and fed into a press, emerging as small briquettes.
These are crushed and sent through low-temperature baking kilns to
remove volatile compounds. From there the carbon is "activated,"
creating small openings to catch impurities.

Recycle, recycle

Since the mid-1990s, the WRC and Materials Recovery Team (MRT)
have brought the Catlettsburg plant to where everything that can be
recycled, is recycled. Throughout the plant, clearly marked recycling
hoppers separate wood, metal, paper, and cardboard waste that years
ago had been left as a mixed solid waste for disposal at a local landfill.
Spent fluorescent tubes collect in a storage shed, also awaiting the
recycler truck. Even the lunchroom sports separate containers for
recycling aluminum cans and paper waste.

Employee Teamwork

The real money-saver in Calgon Carbon's recycling program comes
from MRT and WRC members' diligence in finding ways to reuse
carbon lost during the activation process. Lab samples, previously
dumped in the trash, are returned to the process. Since January 1997,
these self-directed teams have diverted six thousand tons of carbon
from the landfill. Now it goes to the reclaim pile where it is blended with
raw material so quality is not compromised. This saved Calgon Carbon
approximately $270,000 in 1998. Disposal savings amounted to about
$110,000 for the same year. Team members are proud of their
accomplishments. As Jackson notes, "The company told us that the
savings from the bypass reclaim material alone pays our salaries (for
the four WRC members)."

Future Plans

The Catlettsburg facility uses between 2.5 to 4 million gallons of water
each day. Wash down water from station cleaning winds up in lagoons.
Once carbon reaches the lagoon, it takes on soda, making it useless
for the reclaim pile due to high ash content. WRC and MRT members
are devising a sump that would trap the carbon before it reaches the
lagoon. This would cut the frequency of annual dredging to every other
year. More importantly, it would save the company $300,000 in
dredging costs each year.

"You have to have a goal," Jackson explains. "And the company's goal
is to have zero waste. It's a high goal, but that's the mark. When you
have a goal like that, you look at it and think, "Well, we don't want any
waste. I see some waste over there--can we do anything with that?' It
makes you think."

--Patricia Longfellow