Environmental Progress - Winter 2000

Environmental Management:
A New Perspective

Bridgestone / Firestone, Inc.

Decatur

All eight U.S. Bridgestone/Firestone, Inc. plants achieved ISO 14000 certification in 1999, making the company the first tire manufacturer to have all its facilities certified. The corporation was ranked best in the industry for environmental performance by the Council on Economic Priorities, a non-profit watchdog organization that rates overall corporate performance.

The BFS Decatur plant was certified in June 1999 and sees ISO 14000 as an avenue to make the environment everybody’s job, not just that of the plant’s environmental manager. The facility wanted to get out of the regulatory problem-mode by increasing environmental awareness and like many other companies found that most BFS Decatur employees assumed that only one person had to deal with the “EPA stuff.” The response was an educational effort to make all staff understand their potential environmental impacts.

One of the steps toward achieving ISO certification was figuring out how to decrease the company’s overall potential environmental impacts. Teams from all parts of the plant were informed of their impacts, then they had to figure out for themselves what training, operation procedures manuals and other steps were needed for improvement.

The use of large numbers of on-site contractors from other companies  was an important source of potential impacts. The engineering and purchasing departments teamed up to write procedures and rules for contractors, which all contractors must now sign, agreeing to comply.

The BFS Decatur plant has been working on air emissions problems. One of the sources of air emissions at the plant was the cementing process used to assemble extruded rubber treads onto tire carcasses before curing. Several changes in cement spraying methods resulted in an emissions reduction of more than 50 tons per year. The efforts also reduced the number of spills, improved housekeeping, reduced waste generation and lowered costs by $200,000 per year.

BFS has utilized P2 techniques by switching from wood pallets to returnable containers that can be used again and again. They have also worked with their vendors to convert raw material deliveries to high volume, reusable containers.

Making everyone see the environment as part of their job is helping the company to save money and be a corporate good neighbor.