(Photo Credit: Valvoline on Facebook)
Valvoline, a global supplier of lubricants and automotive services, published its 2017 corporate social responsibility report this week. The company reports achieving zero-landfill status at 45% of its blending and packaging facilities and 30% of its warehouses.
The company’s goal is to reach zero-landfill status for all facilities and warehouses within 10 years. “Last year, Valvoline sites reduced solid waste generation from 620,600 pounds to 551,800 pounds, a drop of 11%, while recycling over 5 million pounds of materials,” the report says.
Although the company has not yet achieved its 10-year goal, it’s moving closer with 99.9% percent of their raw material currently being used to produce their products or being recycled. The report did not state how many facilities and warehouses Valvoline operates, nor how much waste gets generated at them annually, however.
An internal waste minimization program creates central collection areas at Valvoline sites to segregate miscellaneous waste for recycling to make the process convenient. “Our sites actively pursue source reduction, reuse, recycling, and recovering materials,” the report says. “We have challenged each facility to move waste streams to recycling or to eliminate them through our source-reduction program as even the smallest of waste streams can add up to significant volumes due to facility scale.”
In 2011, Valvoline first introduced NextGen, a 50% recycled motor oil that the company says exceeds all Society of Automotive Engineers and American Petroleum Institute specifications. Valvoline is currently testing and developing new formulations aimed at reducing their customers’ environmental impacts.
The company developed HD GEO SLF, a lubricant applied to stationary engines operating at landfills, in 2017. “These engines are actually fueled by the landfill-produced gas while simultaneously converting the landfill gas to electricity for energy consumption,” the CSR report says. “Our product enables extended maintenance intervals and helps protect the engine from rapid deposit formation caused by siloxanes, which are part of the gas mixture evolved from landfills. One customer calculated annual savings of $62,000 per engine from reduced maintenance costs and downtime.”
The full report, which also describes their new sustainably designed $35 million world headquarters in Lexington, Kentucky, is available here.
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