Recycling in an Industrial Workplace

As it turns out, the opportunities for recycling are so vast that GM, one of the largest manufacturers of cars and trucks on the planet, makes a billion dollars a year recycling everything from scrap steel to paint waste, as a recent piece in Forbes explains.

For example, scrap steel that is left over after doors and other car body parts are stamped out are gathered up and sold to a company called Blue Star Steel that uses them to make small brackets for products such as heating and air conditioning equipment. Usually, scrap steel is melted down in a foundry and then reprocessed, taking a great deal of energy. In another example, wooden pallets used for shipping are sold to construction companies for building material.

GM recycles a lot of material internally. Cardboard, for example, is made into sound dampening for certain vehicles. Waste plastic is made into radiator shrouds. Test tires are shredded and made into air and water baffles.

GM is a huge company and can afford to invest the amount of money necessary to create a recycling system. However, the point is that manufacturing recycling can happen on any scale from huge auto plants to smaller factories employing a few dozen people. What gets recycled and how it can be monetized is limited only by the imagination.

Talk to Clean Planet about recycling solutions for your workplace.

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