SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (Oct. 27) — Three rubber companies — Gates Corp., Cardinal Health and Continental Tire North America Inc. — have won the Illinois Governor´s award for achievements in pollution prevention.
A total of 24 state awards were made.
The Gates facility in Galesburg mixes slab rubber stock for five other Gates hose manufacturing facilities. Its recent pollution prevention projects include a replacement project in the Carbon Black Handling system that has saved $280,000 per year, reduced waste to the landfill, improved raw material usage, and lowered maintenance costs.
Conti´s Mount Vernon plant, which manufactures radial tires, is ISO 14000-certified and views pollution prevention as one of its core business practices. The company decreased the volume of its byproducts sent to landfill by 7.3 million pounds in 2005, and now recycles 71 percent of all of the waste and by-products that are generated at the plant.
Cardinal Health´s McGaw Park site, which provides health care products and services, instituted a project to reduce its packaging by 5 percent, or 3.2 million pounds. This goal was met early, with results that were over the target goal.
Employees throughout Cardinal Health participated by generating ideas, documenting improvements, and helping with experiments that were necessary to implement changes to these medical packages.