By: Deborah Johnson Wood
American Seating recently announced two environmental initiatives that have changed how the company does business: the development of a sustainability manager position, and the elimination of iron phosphate from the company’s powder coating process.
After 20 years as a product market manager, Brock Hesselsweet became the company’s first manager of sustainability last summer.
In September, the company discontinued the use of iron phosphate in one of two metal coating plants; the second plant will eliminate it in March.
Before metal can be powder coated it must be prewashed. The prewash recipe combined iron phosphate and 160-degree water. When the factory drained the water, the iron phosphate went with it to the Grand Rapids wastewater treatment facility. But wastewater treatments cannot remove iron phosphate, so it continued into nearby waterways where it promoted algae growth.
“Algae depletes the oxygen level of water and that kills the fish and other organisms and upsets the environmental balance,” Hesselsweet says. “You can have areas where there’s no oxygen and nothing lives there.”
To help prevent this destruction, American Seating replaced the iron phosphate with zirconium.
And while zirconium is more expensive, it works in water at ambient temperature. That eliminates the need to heat the water, reduces the use of fossil fuels and keeps production costs down.
“We switched from wet coating to powder coats about 10 years ago to get away from VOCs (volatile organic compounds),” Hesselsweet says. “We want to leave the environment as pristine as possible for our children and their children.”
Source: Brock Hesselsweet, American Seating; Molly Klimas, Intent Public Relations
Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at deborah@rapidgrowthmedia.com.