Environmental benefits of product stewardship

Product stewardship encourages all parties that design, manufacture, sell, and use a product to share responsibility for reducing the environmental impacts associated with that product's life. This creates a framework to view products as resources rather than waste.

Manufacturers are encouraged to take a larger role in the collection and recycling of their products at end of useful life. At the early stages of a product's life, manufacturers can design products that are easy to recycle and contain fewer toxic chemicals. When product stewardship is integrated into overall design and manufacturing processes, environmental impacts are reduced.

Examples of Stewardship

Individual Company

Some stewardship initiatives are driven by individual companies that want to experience cost savings in their operations. Such initiatives tend to facilitate innovation and promote investment in new technologies, which yields environmental benefits.

Collins & Aikman Floorcoverings | www.cafloorcoverings.com

C&A recycles carpet through their Floore carpet buy-back program. C&A purchases used vinyl-backed carpet, regardless of manufacturer, and processes it into 100% recycled-content backing for C&A carpeting, closing the recycling loop by using the old product to make a new one.

• C&A has recycled over 35 million pounds of carpet and manufacturing waste.
• C&A has reduced both energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from their operations by 28% per square yard.
• The average face weight of their products is 20% below the industry average, but the carpet lasts up to three times longer than conventional carpeting.

C&A also purchases recyclable and recycled content products for its daily operations. The result of all these efforts is reduction of raw materials, waste, emissions, and energy.

Xerox | www.xerox.com/gwa

Through the Supplies Return & Recycling Program offered as a part of the Xerox Green World Alliance, customers can send back Xerox-brand supplies for free recycling. Returned copier and printer cartridges are remanufactured for resale, containing an average of 90% reused/recycled parts.

This program has significantly reduced environmental impacts:

• Over 3 million printer cartridges and toner containers were returned to Xerox in 2003, keeping 17 million pounds of waste from entering landfills.
• In 2003, parts reuse saved energy (1.5 million megawatt hours) and prevented carbon dioxide emissions (698,000 tons).

Xerox also offers reuse and recycling options for their machines. Xerox will remove and recycle existing machines from customer sites when replacing with new equipment. Customers can pay to ship other used Xerox machines back to the company for free recycling.

Nike | www.nike.com

Nike's Reuse-A-Shoe program keeps used shoes out of the waste stream, creating sports surfaces out of any brand of used or defective athletic shoes. Nike teams up with sports surfacing companies to include granulated Nike Grind shoe particles into various sports surfaces. Nike is conserving resources, reducing waste, and reducing their overall impact on the environment.

• Nike collects 1-2 million pairs of shoes each year, and has recycled over 15 million shoes since 1993.
• It takes approximately 3,000 shoes to make a basketball court; 100,000 shoes go into making a Reuse-A-Shoe track.
• Nike designs athletic footwear that can be disassembled and recycled.

Nike is working on developing a long-term plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from Nike-owned facilities and those of their suppliers. Industry Initiatives Industry initiatives are also motivated by economic efficiencies; these are typically carried out by a group of companies or manufacturers within a specific industry and the major outcome is a reduction in environmental impacts. Public education may be necessary to generate participation in the initiative.

Industry Initiatives

Industry initiatives are also motivated by economic efficiencies; these are typically carried out by a group of companies or manufacturers within a specific industry and the major outcome is a reduction in environmental impacts. Public education may be necessary to generate participation in the initiative.

Rechargeable Battery Recycling Corporation | www.rbrc.org

Approximately 350 million rechargeable batteries are purchased annually in the U.S. The RBRC has developed a nationwide program called Charge Up to Recycle! where retailers, businesses, communities, and public agencies collect and send used batteries to a recycling facility for processing. National retail partners include Best Buy, Home Depot, and RadioShack.

Batteries are recycled into products such as new batteries and stainless steel, while keeping toxic metals-cadmium, mercury, and lead-from getting into the environment.

• RBRC collected over 4 million pounds of rechargeable batteries in 2003, and has recycled more than 22 million pounds of rechargeable batteries since 1995.
• Nearly 80 percent of the total collected in 2002 was nickel-cadmium (Ni-Cd) batteries, keeping approximately 364,000 pounds of cadmium and 650,000 pounds of nickel out of the waste stream.
• The program collects these types of rechargeable batteries for recycling: Ni-Cd, nickel-metal hydride (Ni-MH), lithium-ion (Li-ion), and small sealed lead (Pb).

Thermostat Recycling Corporation | www.nema.org/gov/ehs/trc

TRC creates an option for heating and cooling contractors to drop off old mercury-switch thermostats, regardless of brand, at participating wholesalers. TRC has been recycling mercury-switch thermostats collected in participating states, including Minnesota, since January 1998. Wholesalers collect the thermostats and send them to the corporation's recycling center where the switches are removed and forwarded to a mercury recycler.

Collections throughout the U.S. in 2004 kept over 80,000 thermostats out of the garbage, yielding over 700 pounds of toxic mercury.

For more information

For more information, contact Garth Hickle at 651-215-0224 or garth.hickle@state.mn.us.