Alcoa Howmet – Dover Operations was one of ten companies receiving awards at NJBIA’s 2007 Awards for Excellence Dinner held at the Pines Manor in Edison on October 16.
“It always gives us great pleasure to recognize the outstanding achievements of our member companies. Each of our winners has a wonderful story that deserves to be told,” said NJBIA President Philip Kirschner.
In 1990, Alcoa Howmet - Dover Operations, which makes superalloys and castings for aerospace and other industries, wanted to reduce waste and help the environment, so it initiated a formal recycling program. For years, the company recycled ordinary office wastes as well as scrap metal and metal dust from its metal manufacturing facility.
From that modest beginning, the company has gone on to develop innovative recycling programs that reuse many of the byproducts from its alloy and casting operations. The company’s program has brought about a 60 percent increase in recycled materials over the past four years, tremendously reducing the amount of waste that has to be treated or disposed of as hazardous waste.
The program’s success is not measured in pounds, or even tons. It’s measured in thousands of tons.
For instance, a potassium hydroxide and sodium hydroxide solution generated more than 1,200 tons of hazardous waste requiring disposal in 2002. Since 2003, more than 2,720 tons of this solution has been recycled and eliminated from the waste stream.
Since 2003, the company has also recycled 57 tons of metal-bearing, waste-water-treatment sludge, 70 tons of metal-bearing sludge from corrosive waste waters, 130 tons of scrap wax, and five tons of material from dust collector bags. Previously, all of these materials would have been sent to secure landfills or otherwise disposed of as hazardous
wastes.
Alcoa Howmet didn’t stop there. Starting in 2005, it created two closed-loop cooling systems to reduce the amount of cooling water it consumes. The system conserves nearly 50 million gallons of water per year.
Since 1984, NJBIA annually has honored a select group of its members with its Awards for Excellence. The Awards for Excellence winners demonstrate outstanding achievements in one of four categories: Job Creation, Outstanding Employer, Environmental Quality and Public Service. All 23,000 member companies in good standing are eligible to be nominated.
An independent panel of judges, who volunteer their time to conduct the judging, reviewed the nominations. This year’s judging panel included individuals from the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) and the NJBIA policy committees.
Mercadien P.C. Certified Public Accountants of Princeton verified the information supplied by the winning applicants.
With more than 23,000 members, NJBIA is the nation’s largest State-level employer association.
 |
 |
Return to 2007 Awards for Excellence |
|
