5 Key Elements In Your Facility’s Sustainability Plan

As businesses worldwide recognize the urgent need to minimize their environmental footprint, developing a sustainability plan has become essential for staying competitive and future-proofing operations. 

As you develop and begin implementing a sustainability plan, here are five areas to take a closer look at:

1. The energy efficiency of your facility
2. The conservation of resources
3. Emissions reduction efforts
4. Supply chain sustainability
5. Your waste management

The Energy Efficiency Of Your Facility

By prioritizing energy efficiency, these facilities can significantly reduce their environmental footprint while concurrently bolstering their bottom line.

Industrial operations are often energy-intensive, relying on machinery, heating, cooling and lighting systems that consume substantial amounts of energy. However, with strategic measures, facilities can mitigate this energy demand and drive toward a more sustainable future.

What are some of the ways you can accomplish this? By:

• Using energy-efficient equipment and technologies like high-efficiency motors, LED lighting and advanced HVAC systems which can yield substantial energy savings
• Performing regular maintenance and optimization of equipment to reduce energy waste
• Incorporate operational adjustments, like scheduling production during off-peak energy hours 

Investments in renewable energy sources, like solar panels or wind turbines, may also offer long-term sustainability benefits by reducing your facility’s reliance on fossil fuels and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. 

It’s also a good idea to routinely perform energy audits of your systems to identify energy inefficiencies and prioritize areas for improvement.

Another area you should consider is the energy efficiency of your business partners. For example, in waste management, you can indirectly reduce the amount of energy you are responsible for using by choosing a waste partner that uses efficient equipment (more on this later).

The Conservation of Resources

Resource conservation lies at the heart of sustainable industrial practices. Central to resource conservation is often the use of recycling and reuse programs for materials like metals, plastics and water. 

By diverting these materials from landfills and reintegrating them into production processes, facilities can significantly reduce their reliance on virgin resources and minimize waste generation.

Through practices like product refurbishment, remanufacturing and material recovery, industrial facilities can transform waste into valuable resources … promoting sustainability and economic viability.

Here are a few other ways your facility can focus on conserving natural resources:

• Efficient Resource Use: Industries can implement measures to optimize resource utilization, like reducing raw material inputs, improving production processes to minimize resource waste, and adopting lean manufacturing principles to enhance efficiency.
• Recycling and Reuse: Establishing recycling and reuse programs for materials like metals, plastics, paper, and water can promote the conservation of natural resources. This involves collecting, sorting and processing recyclable materials to reintegrate them into production processes or other beneficial uses, thereby reducing the demand for virgin resources.
• Energy Conservation: Like we discussed above, implementing energy-saving measures can reduce energy consumption and your reliance on fossil fuels. This can include investing in energy-efficient equipment, optimizing heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, and adopting renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and hydroelectric power.
• Water Management: Implementing water-saving measures to minimize water consumption and reduce the environmental impact of water usage can help reduce the burden on earth’s natural resources. This may involve optimizing water usage in manufacturing processes, recycling and treating wastewater for reuse and implementing water-efficient technologies and practices. An example of this is at Samex Environmental; our water treatment plant takes commercially clean, non-hazardous water and repurposes it to brick manufacturing. 
• Sustainable Sourcing: Partnering with suppliers that adhere to sustainable sourcing practices, such as responsibly harvesting raw materials, minimizes your environmental impact and promotes ethical labor practices throughout the supply chain.

By adopting these strategies and integrating sustainability into their operations, you can contribute to the conservation of natural resources while promoting long-term economic viability and resilience.

Emissions Reduction Efforts

Direct and indirect industrial greenhouse gas emissions account for about 30% of total U.S. emissions, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This makes industrial emissions the second largest contributor to emissions of any sector.

Direct emissions are those produced by burning fuel for power or heat. However, direct emissions can also be produced through chemical reactions and leaks from processes or equipment at industrial facilities. Indirect emissions refer to emissions produced by burning fossil fuels at a power plant to generate electricity that is later used by an industrial facility to power machinery.

One key strategy for emissions reduction is investing in cleaner technologies and processes that produce fewer emissions. This can include upgrading equipment to more energy-efficient models, implementing pollution control technologies such as scrubbers and catalytic converters, and optimizing combustion processes to minimize emissions of pollutants such as nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and particulate matter.

Industries can also reduce emissions by optimizing energy use and transitioning to renewable energy sources like solar, wind and biomass. By reducing reliance on fossil fuels, which are a major source of GHG emissions, industries can lower their carbon footprint and contribute to mitigating climate change.

Supply Chain Sustainability

Who you work with impacts your facility’s sustainability goals. Collaborating with suppliers that prioritize environmental responsibility and sustainable practices throughout the supply chain is important to consider when developing your sustainability objectives. 

By partnering with like-minded organizations, industrial facilities can promote responsible sourcing, reduce environmental impact and enhance supply chain resilience. You can find partners with similar sustainability initiatives by looking for companies that have published sustainability reports or plans, as well as by conducting on-site assessments to evaluate their compliance with regulations and sustainability standards.

Industries can promote transparency and accountability in their supply chains by tracking and disclosing sustainability performance metrics, like greenhouse gas emissions, water usage and waste generation. This helps to build trust with stakeholders and demonstrates your commitment to sustainable business practices.

Yet, every facility’s supply chain will look different. When examining your network of interconnected entities, take a closer look at:

• Your suppliers
• Manufacturers as part of your production processes
• Distributors and wholesalers of purchased goods 
• Logistics and transportation providers
• Service providers in various aspects like IT, packaging and quality control
• Third-party providers like logistics or customer support
• Waste providers

Particularly with waste providers, ensuring alignment with your sustainability objectives is crucial. Let’s explore why.

Your Waste Management

Effective waste management is a critical component of your facility’s sustainability strategy. It involves the responsible handling, treatment and disposal of waste generated throughout your operations, ensuring minimal environmental impact and compliance with regulations.

When selecting waste management partners, prioritize aligning your sustainability plan. Look for partners that offer environmentally responsible solutions, whether it’s recycling, composting or energy recovery. By diverting waste from landfills, you can minimize your facility’s carbon footprint and contribute to a more sustainable future.

Particularly with industries that generate solvent waste, there is an opportunity to incorporate a zero-waste solution into your sustainability plan.

Solvent recovery reduces the amount of waste generated by reclaiming and purifying solvents from waste streams. Whenever spent solvents are disposed of as waste, new raw materials must be extracted to replace them.

At Samex, our solvent distillation process focuses on zero waste. Here’s an overview of how solvent distillation works:

• Still bottoms are generated during the solvent distillation process. We take any leftover still bottoms to our fuel blending area, where they are blended with other flammable liquids. This process meets the specifications of cement kilns that use the blend as an alternative fuel source.

• Our water treatment plant takes commercially clean, non-hazardous water and repurposes it to brick manufacturing. 

• Any solid byproducts that result from the treatment process are transported to the fuel blending area, where they become part of the repurposed waste that is sent to cement kilns.

A top treatment, storage and disposal facility (TSDF) can even help you meet other areas of your sustainability plan like the ones we outlined above. 

For example, when choosing a solvent distillation plant, look for one that embraces energy-efficient technology that results in high recovery volume and reduced volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions.

As we mentioned above, our water treatment plant repurposes water used during the recycling process. By ensuring nothing is wasted, and solvents are returned to industry, we are conserving resources and ensuring nothing goes to landfills.

By working together to identify opportunities for waste minimization and resource recovery, you can maximize the value of your waste streams while minimizing environmental harm.