Environmental Progress - Winter 2000

Motorola Plants Share EMS Experiences

Northbrook, Arlington Heights plants among 13 Illinois facilities involved

(The following is one of a series of articles recognizing commercial operations in Illinois that are successfully demonstrating that Environment Management Systems can help companies achieve superior environmental performance.)

Motorola, Inc. is a leader in the global telecommunications industry, with 10 facilities in Illinois employing more than 30,000 people. Its corporate headquarters are located in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg.

Motorola - Northbrook

Motorola's Automotive Industrial Electronics Group (AIEG) located in Northbrook, Ill. is the main research and engineering center or the company's automobile products division.

"We are working with our customers, primarily in the automotive industry, to develop products that can be disassembled after their usefulness for recycling," says Kregg Salvino, manager of EHS at Northbrook. "The idea is to reduce or eliminate as many of the hazardous materials in our products as possible so that the majority of the product can be recycled," says Salvino.

For several years, Northbrook has been invited to participate in a program called Green Day, sponsored by automotive giant General Motors (GM). Green Day is designed to help educate the GM community about state-of-art environmental technologies. Motorola AIEG has been asked to present their latest technologies, recycling programs, plant environmental programs and environment tools at Green Day. Among thousands of GM suppliers, Motorola has been the only electronics supplier invited to participate in this event.

GM has recognized Motorola's Northbrook facility by awarding it with its Supplier of the Year award in 1998 and 1999.

Last September, Motorola-Northbrook received the Motorola CEO Award for being one of six facilities in the first Motorola business group to be registered to the international standard, ISO 14001. Other Motorola facilities receiving that recognition were facilities in the U.S., France, United Kingdom, and China.

Motorola - Arlington Heights

Motorola's Global Telecom Solutions Sector (GTSS) is responsible for the manufacturing, sales and integration of Motorola's cellular infrastructure with numerous plants worldwide. The world headquarters for GTSS in Arlington Heights, Ill., occupies 1.3 million square feet and employs about 6,000.

"For the past two years, our facility has participated in Illinois EPA's Graduate Internship Program," says Kia Zuber, environmental engineer at the facility. "Our interns have worked on projects involving the reduction of process chemical usage and the development of more environmentally preferred products."

The facility won the 1999 Governor's Award for Pollution Prevention in the continuous improvement category, the 2000 Award for Outstanding Business Waste Reduction and Recycling Programs from the Illinois Recycling Association and the OSHA Voluntary Protection Star Award in 2000.

These awards recognized Motorola's continuous improvement of environmental and safety internal and community outreach programs, including an annual community computer and electronics recycling event that in spring 2000 collected over 216,000 pounds (108 tons) of materials from local residents for recycling.