Environmental Sustainability is a phase that we will hear more and more in the decades ahead, as we all begin to look anew at our stewardship of planet Earth.

The issues of global warming and other environmental impacts have suddenly taken on new meaning. With gas prices edging over $3 a gallon, environmental sustainability and the cost of energy
have become an issue for today.

So what do these words mean for the workplace? Quite simply, they tell us that major businesses like Ford, General Electric, Honeywell, Toyota, Honda etc. are looking first at what they produce and
second at their own workplaces to ask: What impact is my product and my workplace having on the environment? What will happen to my product when it is at the end of its life? What happens to
the cutting oils we use in machining when we are done with them? What about the air my employees breathe? What about the scraps from my manufacturing process, such as metals, plastic, cardboard etc.?

Can my product be easily recycled when the end user is done with it? To answer those questions, manufacture’s like Mercedes and BMW have set up “disassembly” plants to dismantle cars
carefully and reuse everything. Some states are making computer manufacturers responsible for the “end of life” of their products.

This is not some isolated group of small, fly by night companies who are doing this. They are finding over and over again that it pays, big time, at the bottom line to do this and not just for good public relations.

So let’s look at one not so small product that is used in every single plant and building in the country to the tune of two to three billion dollars per year. Some plants spend upwards of $200,000 per year on this product. One retail chain spends almost $10 million a year.

Not to keep you in suspense any longer, we are talking about the lowest of the low, that stuff we walk on every day, that dirtiest of dirty floor coverings, floor matting.

Right now, ask yourself, what do we do with our dirty old mats when thy are worn out? In the dumpster, right? How about the oil soaked ones from the machining operations, etc? Again, the dumpster, right?
Maybe, in some plants with conscientious managers, they go into the regulated waste pile. Well, gosh, what else can we do with those darn things? Who would want them? Well, have hope, tests have
shown that most of those mats can be easily recycled. Recycled back into what, you ask? Why, of course, back into more, you guessed it, more floor mats.

After all, some are already made from recycled material in the first place. And let’s face it, they are mostly dark in color and they are on the floor and we are going to walk on them with our dirty
and sometimes oily feet. So long as the COMFORT, SLIP RESISTANCE AND DURABILITY are there, why not recycle them.

Besides, after basic cleaning and removal of contaminants, an almost 500° F melting temperature changes the old dirty mat into brand new matting with no downsides. In fact, with the cost of plastic,
raw material continuing to go up, the old matting will actually have value. One manufacturer has already announced a buy-back program of its matting.

Turtle Plastics Co., a 26-year-old matting provider, has been using recycled plastic from its inception. The recycled materials they have used include auto trim, cable scrap, swimming pool liners
and water park rafts.

Now, they are taking sustainable development and entering into contractual agreement with end users to BUY BACK their matting products at the end of life.

This is for five years on uncoated mats, and one year on coated mats. At that time, they will pay the end-user for the value of the raw material. As an example, the current price for recycled
PVC is about $.35 per pound. Products typically weigh 1.5 to 2 pounds so the buy back price is $.50 to $.70 each. Not a lot, you say, but consider the following: *No landfill costs to dispose of old matting.
*If mats are oily or soaked with cutting fluid, etc., the matting should be treated as regulated waste, which is even more costly.

*The company is either buying into the idea of Sustainable Development or they are not. If they are, than this is an automatic thing to do. Once the matting is received at Turtle Plastics, it is cleaned in an environmentally proper way, ground and made into new matting products. FSM Tom Norton is the president of Turtle Plastics. For more information on this program, email tom@turtleplastics.com
or call 440-282-8008 ext. 202.