By: Deborah Johnson Wood
Leaders at the Nankai Electric Railway Company of Osaka Prefecture, Japan, figure they’ll save some 5.3 million gallons of water and 12.7 tons of carbon emissions annually simply because they replaced standard urinals with water-free urinals at 18 train stations. The Grand Rapids office of Falcon Waterfree Technologies, a company with headquarters in California, oversaw the operations and logistics of the urinals’ manufacture.
“These were built at Shodensya, a partner company in Japan, but our operations department here manages the logistics of our operations all over the world,” says Randall Goble, spokesperson, “so our core technology is needed to keep things rolling.”
The firm saw 30 percent growth over the past year and recently brought on two people to fill the newly created positions of operations coordinator and customer experience coordinator.
“We needed more people to support our business growth,” Goble notes. “We’ve had the luxury of some pretty wonderful growth that’s accelerated over the past couple of years. The Japan market was one where there wasn’t much of a presence of our product and we explored this with different municipal authorities to help them meet the need to conserve on water. This has taken several years to bring us to the point of actually installing the first water-free urinals in Japan.”
The railway expects to reduce its operational costs because the urinals don't require water, sewage disposal or drainage pipes, and there is a reduction in maintenance costs because there is no lime buildup to remove.
“In Japan muda means an activity that is wasteful and doesn’t add value,” says Goble. “Standard flush urinals really fit that description regarding water conservation.”
Source: Randall Goble, Falcon Waterfree Technologies LLC
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Deborah Johnson Wood is the development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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