Shaw earns California Water Environment Assn.'s ‘Facility of the Year' 2010 award

Home Textiles Today Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 3/2/2011 11:53:14 AM

Dalton, Ga. - The California Water Environment Association (CWEA) has named Shaw Industries Group Inc.'s Santa Fe Springs, Calif., plant the "Facility of the Year" in honor of the flooring company's innovative wastewater and storm-water management, air quality and waste management conservation efforts.

Shaw accepted the honor on Feb. 28 at the CWEA's 38th annual P3S Training Conference & Exhibition.

"Shaw's Santa Fe Springs facility stands out in California for its commitment to environmentally conscious practices across all aspects of its operations," said Paul D. Schmidtbauer, CWEA P3S Awards Committee chair - South. "From recycling and saving millions of gallons of water to its ‘Zero Waste to Landfill' status, the facility is a model of best environmental practices for our state."

The facility diverts residual waste from landfills by sending it to a waste-to-energy facility in the City of Commerce for energy recovery. Its other environmentally-conscious practices include recycling 100% of carpet production waste, including carpet, lint, floor sweepings and yarn, into pre-consumer recycled content and minimizing air emissions through the use of low NOx burners on two ship-scale boilers.

"As a local manufacturer, it was important to Shaw to implement environmentally responsible practices, especially those that drastically conserve water at the facility, being that the Colorado River - which provides water for our county - has remained in a drought for the past 11 years," said Bill Woyshner, Shaw's Tuftex Divisional Environmental/Safety Manager.