CH Environmental Programs – Recycling Regulations
Crownhill is constantly focused on developing and improving our environmental programs to ensure that we continue to provide our customers with the most environmentally friendly value proposition to help them meet their internal objectives while also providing them with a story they can share with their clients. As a distributor of packaging products the first and most impactful area of the business to focus on is the products themselves. To this affect Crownhill has spent significant time and effort revamping our product lineup to be as environmentally friendly as possible; to do this Crownhill has attained environmental certifications, sourced products from new vendors, and influenced our key vendors to attain similar certifications thus creating value throughout the supply chain. This focus is critical in bringing an environmentally focused value proposition to the market, however, just as important as the products you sell is the way in which you carry out the daily activities that make up your business. Crownhill understands that in order to market ourselves as an environmentally friendly organization we must also behave like an environmentally friendly company. To make this shift sustainable it must become a culturally ingrained behavior that the organization adopts, otherwise it faces the risk of just being a passing fad. At Crownhill we have looked for ways to fundamentally change the way we go about doing business in order to embrace the environmental movement that we have been preaching.
One such green project, which has become prominent, is the way we recycle and the effectiveness of our processes. As a distributor of packaging products you can assume just how much corrugate based materials flow through our facility. We annually process tonnes of corrugated material, and in some cases, we find ourselves left with thousands of corrugated containers that need disposal. In the past, we would simply throw all of our corrugate into a recycling bin outside of our facility. When the bin was full, our recycling vendor would come pick it up and put our materials into the recycling stream. While this process was still environmentally friendly, it was not fully inclusive. It was at this point in time where the corrugated industry began to feel pressures from the market to become more environmentally friendly. Customers were demanding products be made from recycled materials; but, the corrugated manufacturers couldn’t keep up. Thus, a market was born for recycled cartons! Crownhill saw this as an opportunity to further refine our recycling processes and become a permanent link in a closed loop process, while at the same time creating a business opportunity. To capitalize on this opportunity, Crownhill invested in bailing equipment. This asset gives Crownhill the ability to ready the materials for incorporation into the recycled stream thus eliminating the need for an outside vendor to pick up our materials. Now, they can be prepared and re-introduced into the manufacturing process directly from our facility. The addition of this capability allowed Crownhill to build more robust internal processes to drive the recyclable materials from their respective production areas directly into the recycling/bailing station. These refinements have eliminated the percentage of recyclable corrugate that previously failed to make it into the recycling process while at the same time ingraining the behavior to recycle our goods into our employees.
The implementation and results of this project were so successful that we have done the exact same thing for our plastic based waste by adding a second bailer to our asset portfolio. The results from both of these eco-friendly projects have been staggering and are measurable through the reports that we received from our waste management vendors. We have seen drastic improvements over the past 12 months in the amount and type of waste that our collection agency picks up from our facility. Not only are these results reflected in the monthly waste reports, but they are clearly visible in the reduction of our waste collection expenses.