Publication date: 14-January-2004
Source:Times Union

Paul Burton, Plug's vice president of manufacturing, remembers how the edict went down.

"It was the typical, 'What are you, crazy?'" Burton said Monday at the company's Albany Shaker Road headquarters. "I don't think it was totally, immediately embraced."

Now, though, the results of Saillant's mission are visible: One morning this week, workers took the guts of a Plug fuel cell and laid them out on two sheets of white paper. One sheet held a little more than 90 percent of the parts. Those can be reused or recycled.

The other sheet goes to the landfill.

Turns out that the vast majority of the cell was reusable even before engineers started working on the idea. Eventually, Plug, which makes generators that convert hydrogen to electricity, hopes to get all the parts on one sheet of paper. Those efforts put the company among a growing number of firms that have adopted such a zero-waste or zero-to-landfill model.

"A lot of people don't realize how far down the road of sustainability the business community really is," said Eric Lombardi, vice president of the board of the GrassRoots Recycling Network, a Madison, Wis., group dedicated to cutting waste. "In the business community, waste equals lost profits. It's lost money."

That equation makes sense on the production side; trash bins, after all, cost money to fill. And several manufacturers, including Xerox Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp., have moved to cut waste from the factory floor.

Toyota, for example, designated two U.S. engine plants as zero-landfill last year, part of an effort to get all its North American plants there by 2006. And while the efforts were designed to trim waste, they wound up trimming costs, too, said Kevin Butt, general manager of environmental matters for Toyota's North American manufacturing operations.

That was seen in paint booths, where excess paint winds up as a slurry that needs to be disposed. Cutting excess spray also saved cash, Butt said.

The cost savings in Plug's effort, though, are harder to see.

"People say, 'I understand these things that are good for the environment, but these things must cost more,'" Burton said.

But Plug saves money in the long run by being able to clean and reuse parts instead of buying or building them new. And that saves customers upfront, because the lower costs are reflected in the service contracts they need to sign when buying a fuel cell.

Randy Brown, Plug's production manager, said the zero-landfill program saved the company tens of thousands of dollars last year.

The company requires its customers to turn in fuel cells when they're ready for retirement. The zero-waste mandate allows the cells to be refurbished and resold at a discount -- but a healthy margin.

Plug has worked with the Rochester Institute of Technology's Center for Integrated Manufacturing Studies to refine its remanufacturing operations. Nabil Nasr, the center's director, said a wide range of companies are finding that refurbishing products can be done at a fraction of what it would cost to buy new ones.

Several factors compel companies to chant the zero-waste mantra. Economics plays a role in some places, while a sense of ecologic duty plays elsewhere. In Europe, though, it is becoming law.

New laws there require manufacturers to pay heed to their products after consumers are done with them, forcing companies to concentrate on sustainable design.

By 2007, carmakers will have to take back unwanted autos -- putting the onus on manufacturers to cut waste.

The notion that companies, not taxpayers, should be responsible for the waste stream could be a boon to Cyclics Corp. in Schenectady.

"The zero-landfill concept offers a great opportunity for us," said Tim Ullman, a spokesman for Cyclics, which is developing a lightweight, recyclable plastic that may find an eager audience in carmakers.

Cyclics is building a factory in Germany now and has inked a deal to sell its plastics to Dow Automotive.

In Europe, as cars start rolling back to the companies that sold them years earlier, the imperative to get something out of them mounts. "You can bet the manufacturer wants to recover as much value as possible," Ullman said.

At Plug, the green is not cash only.

"The point is, it's the right thing to do for business," said Plug's Burton. "It's the right thing to do for the environment."