Three rubber firms win Illinois awards for pollution prevention

Springfild, Illinois -- Three rubber companies -- Gates Rubber, Cardinal Healthcare and Continental North America -- have won the Illinois Governor's award for achievements in pollution prevention. A total of 24 awards were made.

The citations for the three rubber companies read as follows:

Gates Corporation, Galesburg- Gates mixes slab rubber stock for five

other Gates hose manufacturing facilities. Recent pollution prevention

projects include:
• A replacement project in the Carbon Black

Handling system that has saved $280,000 per year, reduced waste to the

landfill, improved raw material usage, and lowered maintenance costs.
• Certain

process cleanout materials are now used once and then incorporated into

the finished product - resulting in a $28,000 per year savings.
• Improved controls and automating in the cooling tower have saved an estimated three million gallons of water per year.
• Lowering

the boiler steam pressure, using low-melt raw materials bags to reduce

landfill waste, selling all pallets to a local metal manufacturing

plant, and obtaining incoming raw materials in either bulk or

returnable containers.

Continental Tire North America (CTNA), Mount Vernon- Continental Tire

manufactures radial tires. The company is ISO 14000 Certified and views

pollution prevention as one of its core business practices.  CTNA

decreased the volume of its byproducts sent to landfill by 7.3 million

pounds in 2005.  CTNA now recycles 71% of all of the waste and

by-products that are generated at the plant.  CTNA also conserves

resources through re-processing a variety of rubber components. Other

project resulted in plant lighting being modified to reduce energy

usage by 50%, natural gas consumption was reduced by 3.5%, and water

usage was reduced by 5%.

Cardinal Health-McGaw Park, Cardinal Health provides health care

products and services.  The company instituted a project to reduce its

packaging by five percent, or 3.2 million pounds.  This goal was met

early, with results that were over the target goal.  Employees

throughout Cardinal Health participated by generating ideas,

documenting improvements, and helping with experiments that were

necessary to implement changes to these medical packages.