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Michelin 
Name: Mike DonaldRole: Senior Safety and Environment Manager Organisation: Michelin Tyre PLC, Dundee Left: Mike Donald Introduction to your business: Michelin Dundee has been making car tyres in Scotland for 36 years. The site employs approximately 800 people and produces 6.5 million tyres a year and provides a significant contribution to the Tayside economy.  Above: The Michelin site, Dundee The products at Dundee are:
In 2007, the site became one of the first industrial sites in Scotland to use renewable energy from onsite wind turbines. The two 2MW structures provide the plant with around 20 to 30% of its energy needs. The company has been working towards 'zero waste' and has achieved zero waste to landfill since March 2008. Why did your business decide to try and achieve Zero Waste? The Michelin Group introduced an environmental indicator called 'Michelin Environment Footprint' or 'MEF', which allows the sites to monitor their environmental performance for all aspects of the environment (including water consumption, energy use, solvent consumption, air emissions and waste disposal). The indicator allows each site to identify priority areas for action. The rising cost of disposal and increasing restrictions on landfill sites highlighted waste as a key area for Dundee to target. How did you start the journey towards Zero Waste? The Michelin group had negotiated contracts for our different grades of rubber to be recycled and reprocessed. We began to segregate our various waste streams to a finer level, including separate skips for metals, paper, cardboard and wood which gets uplifted for recycling. Our general waste is incinerated nearby, but we are constantly looking for more sustainable long-term options for this waste stream. How have you encouraged staff to become more involved in environmental issues? All staff receive environmental awareness as part of their company induction. Members of each department meet quarterly to discuss environmental objectives and resolve problems. Environmental issues are often highlighted in our internal weekly newsletter.  Above: Materials waiting for collection We operate with the manufacturing ethos 'Right First Time', and so if a high volume of waste is being produced, we can directly relate that back to a lack of quality control. It also means we can attach a cost to waste, which translates much better to department managers than tonnage figures. What benefits have you got from reducing, reusing and recycling your waste? Our re-negotiation of contracts for the cardboard/paper and general waste streams has saved us approximately £1.5k per quarter. Unfortunately the transport element of sending our rubber waste to continental Europe in 2008 has incurred cost, but as we streamline the supply chain and find more local solutions, this should become a cost saving also. Environmentally we have diverted over 1000 tonnes from landfill in 2008, and have provided feedstock for the manufacture of many innovative products, including aggregate, road and bridleway surfaces, filter media and soundproofing. What obstacles have you faced in trying to achieve Zero Waste? Our uncured rubber waste has proved to be difficult to reprocess in the UK. The sticky nature of the uncured rubber means it is more difficult to process than used tyres which can be crumbed and shredded. Currently we send the rubber waste to locations in continental Europe, which incurs significant cost in transport. There has been advancement in the technology to deal with uncured rubber and we are starting to find more local outlets for this type of waste. What's been the single biggest challenge and how have you tried to overcome it? Its taken time to get the staff to recognise that our rubber scrap can be a raw material for our waste customers and that this needs to be contamination-free and treated with more respect than in the days when we used to throw it all into a skip. Which wastes do you produce and how do you deal with each one? Waste type
General waste Metals (various) Cardboard Office paper/newspaper Wood, pallets, etc Scrap tyres Uncured rubber Uncured rubber with textile component Uncured rubber with metallic content Disposal route
Incinerated Recycled Recycled Recycled Recycled Crumbed and recycled Reprocessed Reprocessed Reprocessed and metal recycled What do you have left to do before you reach your Zero Waste goal? We have achieved zero waste to landfill since March 2008, but some of our waste still goes to the incinerator adjacent to our site. There is room for us to improve the outlets for some waste streams, and begin to move towards more sustainable methods. We talk regularly to businesses with new and innovative ways of dealing with our waste streams. There is room for us to further segregate and recycle elements of our general waste too. What else have you done to try and improve the environmental impact of your business and staff? 
We have two 2Mw wind turbines on site which provide us with up to 30% of the energy used onsite. We have recently focussed on an energy saving campaign in the workplace whereby employees are offered a reward for reporting energy inefficiencies such as steam leaks or lights being left on unnecessarily.We have also had support from Energy Saving Trust and Scottish and Southern Energy to help people take the energy efficiency message home and help them to save energy and money beyond the workplace. As a result of our efforts, we have reduced our energy consumption and associated CO2 emissions which has allowed the site to be considered as an installation with low emissions in accordance with the EU ETS Scheme. Right: Renewable windpower generated on site Finally, what advice would you give to other businesses considering reducing their waste to landfill? It can take a bit of time and effort to set up a good supply network, but the right solution can save money in the long term. It's probably too ambitious to achieve zero waste immediately – we started around 2 years prior to achieving our 'zero waste to landfill' tag. It's worth remembering there are an increasing number of organisations to help too – we've worked with NISP Scotland, Waste Aware Business, Envirowise among others who were able to offer support and advice, and who had a wealth of knowledge about current waste processors and outlets / markets in Scotland and the elsewhere in the UK.  |
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Wallace House, 17-21 Maxwell Place, Stirling, FK8 1JU Tel: 01786 468 789 Fax: 01786 464 611 |
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