Section 2: Rethinking In-House Processes
 John Maher-Maher Fine Art
Hi I'm John Maher. I'm a professional artist working full time. I work in photography. I make black and white prints and I hand color them using small brushes and cotton swabs.
In the studio I try to reuse any materials I can. One example is these cut frames. They come to me wrapped in this foam cloth like this. After I assemble the frames I reuse this to pack the frames —send them off to galleries or off to a customer. So it comes in very handy and then the galleries once again them when they send them out. So this is multiple use product this foam packaging material.
These pieces of mat are what are left after cutting down larger mats. They're too small to be used for anything besides backing up more mats being cut. Which is what I am doing here. Rather than recycling them…I'm reusing them to back up these new mats being cut. After awhile they become totally cut through. Turn it around use the other side. And when that's finished that's when they get recycled.
Narrator
Sam Armstrong, one of Nypro Oregon's sharp-eyed employees saw that a few changes could make their dry air canisters reuseable.
Sam Armstrong-Nypro Oregon
This is a dry air canister that we blow hot air through to remove the moisture from the air that we use to dry our plastic that we process here. These canisters cost 600 dollars apiece. We use about 100 of them a month. We found by taking the four bolts out of the top and sliding the screen which contains the descant and drilling three little holes in here and draining the descant into a cardboard gaylord and then putting new descant in it and resealing it with bolts and then putting it back together and reusing it. To do that costs us $1.57 compared to the $600 that it cost to buy this one brand new. So 100 times 600 compared to 100 times $1.57 is quite a substantial savings for the company and for the community.
After insuring that you have a sturdy and sound ladder, you may start to use it.
Narrator
Nypro Oregon also uses plastic pallets for in-house transportation. These pallets cut down on wood waste and don't shed fibers in their clean room operations.
Continue.
Back to top
|
