50 Years of Earth Day – Happy Earth Day!
Today marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day and it will be observed in over 190 countries. For EXAIR, this year marks our 37th year helping compressed air users save compressed air energy and electrical resources. And the 37th year for improving our own efficiencies and processes in order to reduce waste. Because your volunteer opportunities may not be available this year, Earthday.org has gone digital for 2020 and is providing ways to participate via your computer.
EXAIR remains committed to a minimal footprint and continues to focus on manufacturing our products with little impact and doing our part to help protect our planet. We are proud to manufacture efficient products, implement processes and programs throughout our facility to help use our resources wisely and recycle everything we possibly can.
We manufacture and sell Intelligent Compressed Air Products that are specifically designed to reduce the use of compressed air throughout facilities. On top of that, when you purchase an EXAIR product it will arrive in fully recyclable packaging and, in most cases, is made from a material that will be recyclable should it reach a point it is no longer useful.
Over the past years we continually look for improvement opportunities within our systems and processes. Recently we have…
- Over the past year, EXAIR recycled 1300 yards of paper and cardboard.
- Recycled 100% of our cardboard and mixed paper products. Of the waste we place into our trash dumpsters – 80% is recycled and 20% is sent to the landfill.
- Recycled 100% of the metal scrap from our machining processes. Improvements in these processes has reduced scrap rates, which equates to 5.5 tons of recycled metal.
- Used our very own Chip Trapper Systems in our manufacturing areas to extend the water-soluble coolant life from 6 weeks per changeover to 6 months per changeover. Keeping our coolant clean allows us to minimize the total amount of wastewater we recycle each year.
- Further reduced our wastewater for reclamation by another 25% compared to last year.
- Minimized our own compressed air use by 1 million cubic feet per year
- Made improvements to the efficiency of our computers and computer servers which require fewer Kilowatt hours (KWH) per day
Another waste reducing factor that has proven to work out well for EXAIR is asking every customer if they accept digital invoices rather than requiring them to be printed and mailed. We have been able to eliminate over 91% of all printed and mailed invoices. This helps to reduce our resources used as well as the amount of materials that are possibly turned into solid wastes at customer facilities. This also prevents the gas and vehicles necessary to deliver all of these invoices by mail.
Adding to the efforts above, we continue to maintain RoHS compliance on all electronic products, as well as actively track our supply chains to ensure no Conflict Minerals are being sourced and used in our products.
If you have any questions on how we can help your facility reduce their volume of compressed air or why we continue to reduce our wastes and increase our recycling efforts, contact us.
Happy Earth Day from EXAIR!
Image Credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring
