Ashland Chemical Company, Foundry Products Division, Cleveland East Plant

Ashland Chemical Company’s Foundry Products Division manufactures coatings and specialty chemicals for the foundry industry. The Cleveland East Plant has approximately 40 employees.

In 1995, Ashland generated approximately 600,000 pounds of industrial waste called "waste paste." To identify and evaluate options for pollution prevention, Ashland formed a team to use a problem-solving approach to reduce the waste paste. The team identified the sources of waste paste to be customer returns, minitank washouts, spoilage, contamination and production errors. Ashland evaluated factors causing these losses and implemented several source reduction and recycling activities to reduce the losses.

Through these pollution prevention efforts, Ashland reduced overall waste by 15%, while production increased by 30%. Other benefits included:

• reducing disposal costs by $36,000 or 40% per pound of production;
• saving $12,000 by using reworked materials that would have been disposed, and
• saving more than $8,700 by finding an off-site reuse opportunity for 200,000 pounds of water-based scrap.

Ashland was a 1997 recipient of the Ohio Governor’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Pollution Prevention, click here to check it out.

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PPG Industries Inc., Coatings and Resins Plant, Delaware

PPG Industries, Inc., Coatings and Resins Plant in Delaware manufactures automotive, residential, appliance and can coatings, as well as resins which make up those products.

Since 1988, PPG has made dramatic progress in pollution prevention. Between 1988 and 1995, PPG reduced their total annual wastes and emissions by more than 8.6 million pounds, a 64% reduction. During the same period, production at the plant increased 42%. PPG’s pollution prevention activities involved the effort and commitment of all employees. Significant pollution prevention activities included:

• installing a decanter to separate and recover approximately 87% of aqueous streams for reuse back into product batches;
• collecting and reusing equipment cleaning wash waters;
• reusing milling equipment prep solvent until it is no longer effective and then recycling it on-site using distillation, and
• implementing a corrective action tracking system to identify and eliminate root causes, reducing defective batches by 60%.

PPG Industries, Inc., Coatings and Resins Plant in Delaware was a 1996 recipient of the Ohio Governor’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Pollution Prevention, click here to check it out.

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RJF International Corporation, Marietta

RJF International Corporation in Marietta is a manufacturer of engineered polymer products for select specialty markets. RGF employs about 425 people at the Marietta plant.

In 1993, RGF implemented a pollution program to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals used in the production of its products in an effort to provide products with a non-toxic life cycle. Pollution prevention program activities focused largely on chemical substitution in the coatings and inks formulation and on the stabilizer system used in the formulation of the vinyl film. RGF has been able to avoid the purchase of control equipment estimated at more than $1.6 million, with associated annual fuel operation costs estimated more than $250,000. Other pollution prevention benefits have included:

• avoiding Title V status under the Clean Air Act Amendments, which would have cost nearly $150,000 per year in administration and monitoring;
• eliminating more than 236,000 pounds of hazardous waste;
• eliminating more than 160,000 pounds of toxic air pollutants;
• eliminating the use of MEK, cadmium and glycol monobutyl ether, and
• 97% reduction in TRI reportable emissions in 1998 from 1993 reporting levels.

RJF International Corporation in Marietta was a 1999 recipient of the Ohio Governor’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Pollution Prevention, click here to check it out.

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Plasticolors, Inc.

Plasticolors, Inc. in Ashtabula is a manufacturer of colorants, additives and dispersions for the plastics industry. The company employs approximately 100 employees.

Plasticolors developed and implemented a pollution prevention program called WASTEMIN. The program included a Waste Minimization Team composed of employees representing administration, sales, technical and production functions. The overall goal for the program was to reduce waste by 25%. The team coordinated activities to increase employee awareness and involvement and to improve segregation, collection and reuse of materials. The WASTEMIN program reduced hazardous waste generation alone by 43% in its first year. The WASTEMIN program recognized the importance of employee involvement by rewarding all employees with a $500 waste minimization bonus.

Other program activities included:

• collecting and reusing resins which were used to purge out sandmill chambers and related equipment between runs;
• improving production scheduling so batches would be processed in a sequence to minimize cleaning;
• purchasing additional mill chambers and pumps to reduce the frequency of cleaning, and
• revising laboratory procedures so that smaller volume quality control samples were needed (reducing disposal volume).

Plasticolors, Inc. was a 1992 recipient of the Ohio Governor’s Award for Outstanding Achievement in Pollution Prevention, click here to check it out.

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Last Update 9/29/00