5,000 Tons of Recycled Newsprint in One Year

The Methodology of 5S Reveals More Ways to Recycle

Whether for electronics, computer, beverage, medical or telecommunication markets, EnviroPAK’s protective molded pulp packaging starts with recycled newsprint. The PULPit wanted to know just how much is recycled and saved from landfills in 2014, so we challenged the operations team to start counting. We asked Mike Brauss, Director of Operations, and here’s what the team reported back…

• more than 5,000 tons of recycled newsprint is converted or diverted from landfills to make our millions of useable packaging parts. These parts are then able to be re-recycled at the end user level, which is happening each and every day.

But recycled newsprint isn’t all that EnviroPAK recycles? Really? Leadership motivates employees to engage in sustainability practices in other areas of the company’s manufacturing process by recycling…

• almost 14 tons of scrap and chip aluminum used to create production tooling, and other miscellaneous metals used throughout the facility;
• a couple tons of plastic used in the process of creating our own production tooling.

Mike Brauss added, “We’ve worked hard to identify other opportunities to enhance our commitment to sustainability, which were established by our work on the Lean Manufacturing methodology of 5S.” Mike Brauss continued, “we take recycling pretty seriously throughout our entire process, and it’s fun to count it all up as we look back on just one year.”