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Hey guys!

Sorry about the delay in getting back to you re: Chicago Waste to Profit Network. Here are the deets!

The WtP Network is a “member-driven organization focused on local and regional sustainability issues that affect organizations within the Greater Chicago Area” (WtP Overview PPT). The goals of the Network are: (1) To provide a collaborative network to address sustainability related issues important to member companies; (2) provide a structured process through which companies can identify and vet partners; and, (3) help companies identify and implement synergies where wasted resources at one facility are used at another.

“By-Product Synergy” is defined as “the matching of wastes and wasted resources from one facility with potential users at another facility to create new revenues or savings, environmental and societal benefits”; and, “wasted resources” are those resources (including by-products, excess transportation and storage capacity, energy, etc.) that are left over after a product has been made or a service provided (PPT).

Unlike the “typical manufacturing process,” which is described as utilizing inputs such as material, energy and water to yield a product for market and waste for disposal, the WtP Network boasts a more cyclical material flow, whereby the output of one process becomes the feedstock of another; not unique from the process of recycling. Click the link below for a process flow chart.

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Examples of synergies facilitated via the WtP Network include: Using glass cutlet waste derived from engineering glass products in mosaic counters and tabletops; re-purposing industrial bleach from Abbot Labs to create clean process water for a steel manufacturer; and, using unrecyclable mixed plastics for remanufacture into parking lot stops and noise barriers.

Overall, the Network boasts a $20 million dollar savings for participating companies, diverting 225,000 tons of waste from landfill (2006-2010).

This all sounds fine and dandy, but how are said synergies discovered? It’s almost as though member companies have access to all inputs and outputs of regionally contextual manufacturers in some type of transparent, portal-like software…

It’s not almost as though, it is! The software is called Cirrus, and it is a web-based application of the “management and reporting of resource and synergy data” (PPT).

Click the link below for access to screen shot of the software.

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Therefore, the Network facilitates synergies by providing a platform where interested parties can go scavenger hunting for various materials and resources that can be of use to their specific manufacturing requirements. Cool, eh?!? And, it’s not only “waste” that is the foundation of company synergies but transportation and energy and water use. An example of this type of synergy includes Waste Management facilities where the methane emitted from landfill is trapped and re-routed to adjacent companies.

For more information on the Network, visit www.wtpnetwork.org.

So what does this mean for taking sustainability at Dordan to the next level? Details to come!

Hey guys!

Today I am going to pick up where I left off on May 30th’s post, investigating how to assess Dordan’s “carbon footprint” and/or develop operational sustainability initiatives at Dordan. The motivations for this new, internally focused sustainability initiative is multi-faceted: first inspired by the SPC’s call for collective reporting and then catalyzed by conversations with LCA practitioners into the value of performing a company-specific LCA, this inquiry was met today with further support via The Chicago Waste to Profit Network, a program U.S. Business Council for Sustainable Development.

Do you remember in mid-May me mentioning a meeting I was to attend at The Plant in Chicago, organized by the U.S. Business Council for Sustainable Development? It was intended to introduce local manufacturers to The Chicago Waste to Profit Network, which is basically a collaborative space where manufacturing commonalities are communicated, closed-loop relationships built, and savings incurred. Well, I never made it to The Plant as I was recovering from falling ill in Toronto for the SPC meeting. Luckily, the organizers of the Network were available to meet TODAY, using this opportunity to bring me up to speed about the value of the Network.


And if I could diverge, for just a moment, and emphasize how wonderful it is when an opportunity—which you didn’t even know you were looking for—presents itself at such an opportune moment it pushes you forward down a path you didn’t even know you were taking...

In other words, in mid-May when I was invited to The Plant I had not delved as deeply into my inquiry about how to take sustainability at Dordan to the next level as I have as of recent. While the Green Manufacturer’s Zero-Waste-to-Landfill workshop at Burt’s Bees I attended this spring introduced me to some of the resources available to companies looking to work towards zero-waste, I didn’t know how to apply said resources to Dordan’s scale. After all, Dordan doesn’t have the economies of scale that say...Subaru of Indiana has, making it difficult to quantify the price/savings of a zero-waste program. Moreover, when Dordan discovered corrugate was the “low hanging fruit” insofar as material diversion from landfill was concerned via internal waste audits and began collecting for recycling, we could not find anyone to take it off our hands! Consequently, it became Upper Management’s assumption that zero-waste at Dordan may not be an economically sustainable program. If only there was a support system out there that allowed manufactures to discover synergies between their process’s inputs/outputs and those within the same geographical boundary, creating economies of scale and facilitating environmental and economic savings. And enter the Chicago Waste to Profit Network.

Details to come!