• In July 2009 Schick was sending more than 4 million pounds per year of waste materials for off-site disposal.
• A metal smelting operation now recycles the sludge.
• By September 2012, Schick had shaved its waste-to-landfill rate razor-thin, achieving zero-landfill status.

Personal care products manufacturer Schick achieved zero landfill in September 2012. Images courtesy of Schick, Milford, Conn.

The average human face grows 615 hairs per square centimeter, according to razor and personal care products manufacturer Schick® (www.schick.com/us/shaving-facts.shtml). The company should know.

“A lot of science is behind producing a blade that gives a close shave. Obviously, we need to know everything about what we’re doing to produce something that shaves as well as a Schick razor,” said Jim Erasmus, global director of environmental, health and safety, and sustainability for Energizer’s Personal Care Division, Schick’s parent company.

Materials are integral to the 103-year-old manufacturer’s success. In 1910 Schick’s founder, U.S. Army Lt. Col. Jacob Schick, first conceived the idea for a razor that could shave without water or lather (www.schick.com/us/shaving-history.shtml). In 1963 Schick became the first U.S. manufacturer to sell stainless steel blades coated with Teflon®. Five years later Schick scientists developed a blade with a thin deposit of chromium.

Today the manufacturer has developed a precise, proprietary chemistry for the stainless steels it uses to manufacture razor blades. One percentage deviation from the chemistry and the blade just won’t cut it.

All of the company’s materials are managed carefully, not only those going into the razors, but also all of their process waste materials such as plastic molding, plastic film and other plastics, cardboard, and stainless steels.

By September 2012, Schick had shaved its waste-to-landfill rate razor-thin, achieving zero-landfill status—but getting there was anything but smooth.

Landfill Waste, Unshaven

In July 2009 the plant’s recycling rate was 30 percent of the waste generated. The plant had trash compactors on-site to collect the remaining 4 million pounds of waste per year, which it sent for disposal. It recycled only two waste materials at that point: cardboard and stainless steel scrap from the razor blade production.

“We received rebates for those two, but nothing else,” said Scott Sutkowski, Schick’s senior environmental health and safety engineer. Costs to landfill-dispose the remaining waste was roughly $150,000 a year.

Schick sought to improve its waste recycling rate as an extension of Energizer’s sustainability program and through the ongoing continuous improvement initiatives of the company’s ISO 14001 program, according to Sutkowski.

“As an ISO 14001-certified company, we have a list of environmental aspects. Every year we evaluate them and come up with goals or environmental management programs to try to reduce our environmental footprint. One of the things that you look at is your volume of waste material and what happens to it. We identified that as an item we wanted to improve,” Sutkowski said.

Erasmus added, “Waste was a frustrating area for us. We wanted to find ways to recycle more, to divert waste from the landfill, but doing so wasn’t readily accessible. We had found a couple of different avenues, but a full recycling program was not a quick process to put in place. A lot of the problem was that we just didn’t have data. We didn’t know what was going where, where it was coming from, or where it was going.”

“So at first we were just trying to get it off the ground. How do we improve our program and recycle more?” Sutkowski said.

Initially Sutkowski, Erasmus, and Schick’s site engineer Bill DiSiero tried to find outlets for the waste on their own and by working with their current trash haulers, but that approach proved unsuccessful.

“They were pretty much just interested in taking our trash, not in recycling,” Sutkowski said.

Getting Help

The team turned to an environmental management and consulting company, A Greener Solution, which had been providing byproduct management services to one of Schick’s affiliated Energizer companies in Dover, Del. The Schick team studied their recycling program and concluded that it might be feasible to ramp up their recycling with help from the company, Sutkowski said.

“It took a while to figure out if it would work for us. Our program was different than the one at Dover because we had many more different types of materials. We worked through that and eventually launched the new recycling program,” Sutkowski said.

Once A Greener Solution (AGS) became involved, the plant’s recycling rate rose noticeably, Sutkowski said.

“I think the stars kind of aligned to kick-start the program when AGS helped us work out a process,” Erasmus said. “Also, they had the wherewithal to find these recycling companies for us and to process and market those materials.”

Sutkowski concurred. “AGS showed us the value of the recyclable materials. I think that got us to realize, hey, if you separate it, you make it a purer waste stream and you’re even able to get some cash back.

“Our recycling rate went up into the 70s [percent] early on, so we increased that rate pretty quickly.”

1. Waste Audit

The first action that the waste management company took was to conduct a waste audit. “They had someone stand at our compactors for 24 hours and record everything that went into them and where it came from,” Sutkowski said.

“When you’re doing an audit, you are taking a snapshot,” explained Robert Render, A Greener Solution CEO. The audit was performed multiple times to confirm the data and to consider differences among shifts.

Part of the audit involved identifying and isolating the different materials. Some of the materials are generated from the manufacture of the product, such as molding polypropylene, thermoplastic elastomer (TPE), high impact styrene, acetal, and, of course, making stainless steel blades, Render said. Other waste materials are generated from the packaging, such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC) blister packaging, biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) film, and cardboard cartons. Other materials the manufacturer must process are polypropylene or polyester from trays that house sourced components.

The combined materials, such as polypropylene molded over TPE or polyethylene terephthalate glycol-modified (PETG) with a polyethylene overwrap, presented more recycling challenges.

AGS created a weekly and monthly spreadsheet specifying exactly which types of waste materials the plant generated, in what quantities, from where in the process, and what the recycling rebate was. “I think it’s important to have that data analysis, because you can better drive the program by knowing precisely where you have to make improvements,” Erasmus said.

Sutkowski added, “Before we started working with AGS, we never really had a good handle on the amount of stuff we generated and where it went. And a lot of times we were relying on the vendors… Basically, we paid for the trash hauler to take the stuff away and then trust them to give us the information. It was like pulling teeth to get data on how much we generated, where our material went, and the rebates,” Sutkowski said.

Erasmus added, “And so our program was to recycle waste materials such as metal and stainless steel that had obvious value and were easy to find someone to recycle them, but we never really had an overall comprehensive program until we started working with AGS. That’s what really solidified our recycling program.”

2. Internal Logistics Strategies

Figure 1
The company uses processing technologies such as shredding and baling to maximize the recyclables’ value.

A Greener Solution’s Render said that the initial challenge was in planning and developing the logistics of going from a single-stream system to a multiple-stream system. “Putting stuff in a single compactor is a very efficient method of moving material out of a facility. When you try to separate the material to potentially turn it into rebate-able products, you need an efficient internal logistics plan.”

“We’ve had long discussions on how best to implement our new program,” Sutkowski said. “Our people were used to dumping bins, one after the other all day long, into the trash compactor. There was the potential for safety hazards, and potential spills of hydraulic oil from the compactor, so we didn’t really like having the compactors.”

Sorting. Now the materials are sorted by material at the source into the new bins. Segregating the materials helps maximize the recyclables’ value (see Figure 1). “So the materials that go into one bin are either one type of material or compatible materials like propylene and the TPE,” Render said.

Portable, Nestable Bins, Corraled. One internal logistics strategy for collecting waste materials and moving them within the plant was a new bin system on wheels that is nestable and stackable (see Figure 2).
Selecting the proper containers, nestable Decade bins on offset wheels, facilitated better sorting, collection, and material movement throughout the plant.

Figure 3
The Schick plant set up “corrals” for material collection bins in various areas of the plant so they would be visible and accessible.

The empty portable bins are stored in a staging area, which is located near the full bin storage (see Figure 3). After an operator puts a full bin into the staging area, he or she pulls an empty one and takes it back to the workstation. At workstation areas, the bins are placed in labeled “corrals” for easy identification and material separation.

“Part of the deal is you want operators to separate the materials and put them in the right bin, but if the bin’s not there, then they’re forced to make a decision: Should I contaminate the next bin or throw something in the trash?” The system is designed so that the bins are very visible and it is apparent when a bin needs to be replaced. “This is a key, key point,” Render said.

The team decided not to phase in the new system but rather to make the change all at once. They removed the compactors completely and replaced them with the new portable bins during a plant shutdown in July. “We didn’t want to start the program and just hope that people would use it. So we got rid of the compactors and all of the bins that fit the compactors,” Sutkowski said. When the staff returned after the shutdown, only the new system was there to be used.

Pressure was on for the new method to work. “It’s the end of the road for waste materials, and so if you stop that process or interfere with it, you just have a lot of trash in your plant,” Erasmus said.

Baling, Compacting, Densifying. Another logistics challenge was handling film, which is very lightweight. Unprocessed, the film in a bin would weigh only 20 or 30 lbs., which doesn’t have much rebate value. AGS brought in Orwak mini-balers to process and densify the film so that the bins hold five or six times that amount of film (see Figure 4).

“So that saves fuel emissions, wear and tear on the bins, travel time and, therefore, cost. They run on 110V and are easy to relocate to optimal locations,” Render said.

Optimizing Material Flow. AGS made other changes, such as relocating certain equipment to optimize the process.

“This all took some time. We had to work within the confines of production, new-product launches, and reconfiguration of the factory,” Render said. “After a period of time, we were recognized as part of the process, and we became more involved in the planning efforts. When a new product comes out, we’re already determining how to deal with the scrap and the logistics of recycling. This proactive planning is one of the most gratifying and important parts of the program development.”

Figure 4
Schick uses Orwak mini-balers to densify film packing material to five or six times what would normally fit into a tote.

3. Locating Outlets

The team tried to increase the recycling rate every year, and by 2012 had achieved a high level of recycling. “Much of the uptick was due to our separation efforts and to how we managed the materials. There was a strong market for the plastic and packaging material,” Sutkowski said.

Compatible Materials. Some waste materials are compatible, Render said. “For example, when the propylene and TPE are ground together, the TPE increases the impact strength of the propylene. So if you are a compounder and you want to add to the impact strength of your material, you might buy virgin TPE, which is expensive, or this material, which is cheaper. It’s just a matter of finding the right market for these combined materials.”

Incompatible Combined Materials. For other waste composed of multiple materials that are not compatible, separation technologies such as electrostatic separation and float sinking are used.

Sludge Drudge. “And then we got to where we had worked through all the materials with a ready market, but still had a few additional things there was not a big market for, or had very little value, like our sludge,” Sutkowski said.

The process of transforming the stainless steel into razor blades requires grinding using lubricants and coolants, which produces sludge. One of the two sludges was classified as hazardous waste, Sutkowski relayed, adding, “It was substantially more difficult to find an outlet for that.

“This was our next big challenge. We wanted to go to the next step of getting rid of the regulated and hazardous wastes through recycling instead of disposal. That is where AGS really showcased its value.”

AGS worked its industry contacts and, in September 2012, located a metal smelting operation, INMETCO, that would take the sludge and recover the value by melting it back down to its components. “So it is a true, recycled material,” Sutkowski said. “When we were searching, we didn’t find anybody that was doing that kind of thing. So we were skeptical when Render told us we could recycle the sludge. But, obviously, it worked out and we were successful at recycling it, with their help and knowledge of the markets.”

Render said he appreciated Sutkowski’s resolve to take care of every last parcel of material waste. “Scott is very meticulous. We were very, very close to total landfill avoidance for a long time, but until the last little bit was handled sustainably, he wasn’t comfortable using that term.”

Finding a sustainable outlet for its sludge was the final step for Schick to becoming landfill-free.

“And so that is how we got to zero landfill,” Sutkowski said.

Fringe Benefits

Hello, Dock Space. One of the side benefits of achieving zero landfill is that removing the trash compactors freed up three dock spaces—a welcome benefit for the dock-challenged plant. “That really helped,” Sutkowski said. “We were growing as a company. We were launching some new products, but our dock space was limited, in part because we had to reserve five or six dock spaces for waste dumpsters or trailers.

“Gaining the dock spaces was huge, because now we can use them to send our products out or to receive raw materials in instead of simply managing wastes,” he added.

Brand Security. Another benefit of the improved recycling program was improved brand security. “There was a lot of concern about brand protection and security. We came up with a way to shred cartridges and razors to recover the plastics and the stainless and so the product is totally destroyed,” Render said.

Cost Savings, Rebates. For Schick, the cost savings achieved from not having to discard the waste is a pleasant byproduct. So, too, is getting higher rebates for its waste materials.

Next Phase: Recycled Content

Now that Schick has a firm handle on maximizing the value of its waste material, it is exploring ways to use its own and others’ recycled waste materials as raw materials in the manufacture of its razors—and even to recycle used razors.

“We are consulting with resin vendors and are in the process of reviewing some of the plant materials to see if we can reuse any of them,” Render said.

In terms of product design, another aspect the manufacturer is considering is the recyclability of its packaging materials.

And then there is the obvious next step to recycle disposable razors. “They’re looking not only at what they’re doing in their own plant, but at what consumers can do,” Render said. “I’ve been asked several times, ‘How can we recycle razors after they’ve been used?’ Right now that is a challenge, but I think that’s coming. When it comes to sustainability, asking ‘How can we…?’ questions is often a great starting point.”

Energizer USA, 533 Maryville University, St. Louis, MO 63141, 314-985-2000, www.energizer.com

Schick, 10 Leighton Road, Milford, CT 06460, 203-882-2376, james.erasmus@energizer.com, www.schick.com