Computers & Software
Fig. 1. DuPont Corian scrap that used to end up in landfills now gets used as landscape stone.
Recycling everything but the kitchen sink
One manufacturer of building innovation products reduced the amount of landfill waste they generated from 81 million pounds per year to zero. Eston Martz reports.
D
uPont Building Innovations helps builders create more efficient and sustainable structures, with advanced products including DuPont Tyvek Weatherization Systems, DuPont Corian solid surfaces, DuPont Zodiaq quartz surfaces,
and more. This year they added a new innovation to that list: they
reduced the amount of landfill they generate to zero. This was no small task - in 2008, Building Innovations produced 81 million pounds of landfill at 15 locations worldwide, a volume equivalent to nearly 16,000 cars or 1,000 loaded tractor-trailers. Dave Walter, Americas Business Manager for DuPont Building Innovations, led the global Six Sigma project team
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that achieved this zero landfill rate. A trained Six Sigma black belt, Walter used Minitab Statistical Software to analyse and make sense of the tremendous amount of data gathered throughout the project.
The challenge
DuPont first established environmental goals more than 20 years ago, and today the company ties those goals directly to business growth and to the development of safer, more sustainable products. The Building Innovations unit chose to tackle an extremely ambitious goal: Within three years, the division would generate zero landfill waste at all of its global manufacturing sites, reusing or recycling all by-products. The Drive to Zero landfill project was particularly
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