At GAF's shingle manufacturing facility in Baltimore, Maryland there are many day-to-day responsibilities beyond manufacturing itself—including materials planning, purchasing, and waste management, to name just a few. Beginning in 2018, the acting plant manager tasked the Baltimore team with another challenge: could they identify ways to make their operation greener and more efficient? Given GAF's long-time focus on sustainability and their knowledge of the Baltimore plant's environmental footprint, it was clear that a focus on waste diversion would result in the most significant improvements.
As Site Materials Manager at the time, Steve Henry, spearheaded the effort. He notes that getting started was the heaviest lift: "It's about having good records, knowing your waste streams, talking with your vendors, and putting a good system in place," Steve said. "Start with the lowest-hanging fruit—what are my biggest waste streams? Who might be able to use this?" The scrap shingles, for instance, weigh the most of all of the plant's waste streams, and disposal—which is based on tonnage—can be expensive. So he focused his efforts on negotiating terms with a shingle recycler to process shingles that would otherwise have been thrown away.
Thanks to the collective efforts of the Baltimore team, the facility received a GreenCircle waste diversion certificate in 2018 that recorded a diversion-from-landfill rate of 87%, a percentage that was substantially raised the following year. GreenCircle Certified is a third-party organization that quantifies and certifies the percentage of a facility's waste that has been diverted in this way. Despite this success, the team didn't stop there and the plant has continued to focus on improving the segregation of waste streams, working toward a further increase in the amount of diverted materials. In 2023, they are proud to have achieved a waste diversion rate of 97%.
Landfill waste diversion touches many aspects of manufacturing—starting with reducing the amount of waste generated in the first place. This may include redesigning processes so they generate less waste, or by reusing materials. Other means of waste diversion include recycling, composting, or selling a waste to a third party. A last resort—used only for materials that can't be reused or recovered—is to send the material to a waste-to-energy facility for energy recovery.
Baltimore's experience has also been shared with the GAF Green Team, which includes representatives from all of the company's manufacturing facilities. The Green Team identifies and implements sustainability projects at their respective locations, and members connect regularly to share global best practices. Team members are responsible for minimizing the footprint at their own facility as well as sharing their learnings so everyone can benefit from the experiences of other sites. Several GAF sites have also achieved waste diversion certificates, including Mount Vernon, IN; Gainesville, TX; Myerstown, PA; New Columbia, PA; Chester, SC; Cumming, GA; Phoenix, AZ; Shafter, CA; Cedar City, UT; and Fontana, CA.
To find out more about the latest GAF sustainability initiatives across their business, visit the dedicated GAF Sustainability page.
