Kenworth’s Renton Plant Receives 2012 Best Workplace For Waste Prevention and Recycling Award from King County
The Kenworth Truck Company assembly plant in Renton, Wash., recently received a 2012 Best Workplace for Waste Prevention and Recycling Award from the King County (Wash.) Solid Waste Division for its exceptional efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle.
"The Kenworth-Renton plant fosters extensive waste prevention and recycling through an employee-driven, comprehensive program," said Daryl Simon, Kenworth-Renton plant manager. "This involves a concerted effort by our employees to reduce, reuse and recycle on a daily basis. We thank King County for this special recognition."
To help divert materials from landfills, the Renton plant's Zero Waste to Landfill initiative features recycling bins strategically placed on the plant floor to aid the recycling of metal plastic, wood, cardboard, batteries, light bulbs, E-waste and paper. Returnable shipping containers, reduced packaging material, and waste-stream segregation are part of the program. Kenworth-Renton's cafeteria also uses food waste composting, and sends waste to Cedar Grove Composting in Renton for recycling into usable compost. The development of an energy management system also helps minimize impact on the environment.
In addition to its latest award, Kenworth-Renton received a 2011 Gold Award from the King County Industrial Waste Program earlier this year. The award is for compliance with the plant's industrial wastewater discharge permit, and recognizes the plant for one year of no wastewater violations of any kind covering discharge, permit, ordinance, reporting, self-monitoring, and King County monitoring. The plant has now received the Gold Award for 13 consecutive years.
Kenworth's plants in Renton, Wash., and Chillicothe, Ohio, both hold the prestigious ISO 14001:2004 certification for effective environmental management systems established to help build Class 8 trucks in an environmentally sustainable manner. Kenworth's medium duty products are produced at the PACCAR manufacturing facility in Ste. Therese, Que., which also holds ISO 14001:2004 status.
Kenworth Truck Company is the manufacturer of The World's Best® heavy and medium duty trucks. Kenworth is an industry leader in providing fuel-saving technology solutions that help increase fuel efficiency and reduce emissions. The company's dedication to the green fleet includes aerodynamic trucks, compressed and liquefied natural gas trucks, and medium duty diesel-electric hybrids. Kenworth is the only truck manufacturer to receive the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Air Excellence award in recognition of its environmentally friendly products. In addition, the fuel-efficient Kenworth T700 equipped with the low-emission PACCAR MX engine was named the 2011 Heavy Duty Commercial Truck of the Year by the American Truck Dealers. Kenworth also achieved the "Highest in Customer Satisfaction with Heavy Duty Truck Dealer Service, Two Years in a Row", according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2011-2012 Heavy Duty Truck Customer Satisfaction Studies.SM Kenworth's Internet home page is at www.kenworth.com. Kenworth. A PACCAR Company.