CAS-MI Goes Green
Being eco-friendly implies minimizing the use of resources to leave behind a minimum footprint on the environment. Such thinking has been applied to industrial processes for some time now. The benefits to the environment include less pollution, and the benefit to the industry is improved bottom lines.
CAS-MI Laboratories has applied the concept of being eco-friendly to its laboratory processes. Two areas for potential pollution reduction were identified and addressed: air pollution and landfill contributions. The goal was to reduce contributions to these two pollution streams to the greatest extent possible.
CAS-MI performs formulation development and evaluations of interior and exterior architectural paints. It is common practice to purchase one-gallon quantities of commercial paint to serve as control samples. It is not uncommon to use only about one cup of said control paint leaving the majority of the one-gallon sample for disposal. In the past, CAS-MI collected these samples into two 55-gallon drums for disposal by a waste management company. However, CAS-MI found a better way to deal with the issue of disposal. Now the paint is donated to Habitat for Humanity to be used in their home building projects or to be sold to generate revenue for their projects. The paint goes to a worthy cause and CAS-MI has saved the cost of disposal and reduced the impact on the environment.
Our next step was to evaluate the large quantities of contaminated solvent that some laboratory processes can generate. It is expensive to dispose of the contaminated solvent, and there are problems associated with shipping the solvent to a disposal site. For example, tetrahydrofuran (THF) is commonly used as a solvent in Gel Permeation Chromatography (GPC) to determine the molecular weight and molecular weight distribution of a polymer. A small amount of polymer ends up in a relatively large amount of THF. In order to reduce our environmental impact, CAS-MI has developed a process to distill the THF away from the polymer thus generating purified THF for future use. Since the THF is relatively expensive due to its high purity requirement, this reprocessing and reuse of the THF represents a cost savings that drops directly to the bottom line.
Finally, we took a look at our landfill contributions as landfill waste continues to be a major issue to the environment. In order to reduce our waste, we began participating in a paper recycling effort to recycle not only paper but also cardboard. Clean cardboard and packing materials are reused to return customer samples or send them developed formulations. Excess or damaged boxes are collapsed and put into the recycling stream. Additionally, the paper use at CAS-MI has been dramatically reduced by implementation of new electronic processes for report preparation and internal meetings.
Terrific improvements have been made at CAS-MI to become more eco-friendly, but there are always other improvements that can be proposed and implemented. We hope to continue our efforts and generate new ways to reduce our impact on the environment.
