For Imation, Bottom Line Is Environmental as Well as Financial

Tom Ferguson, manager of Imation Corp.’s Camarillo plant, calls it good old-fashioned common sense. The California Integrated Waste Management Board calls it an extraordinary effort in corporate environmentalism.

By whatever label, the facility’s 72% reduction of landfill waste since 1990 is positive for the environment and good for the company’s bottom line. It also has earned the Ventura County operation a top honor in the waste management board’s 1997 Waste Reduction Award Program, or WRAP.

“There are a couple of ways to look at environmental stewardship--first is the product you manufacture, and second is the process you use to manufacture it,” said Ferguson, head of the data-storage products manufacturing facility, one of 10 statewide to receive a WRAP of the Year honor.

“On the process side, there’s two ways to approach” environmental stewardship, Ferguson said. “One is to approach it because you have to, the other is to approach it because it’s good business sense. Over the years, we’ve adopted it as a fundamental business practice.”

That business practice, Ferguson said, encompasses everything from recycling soda cans in the cafeteria to eliminating wasteful manufacturing techniques.

More efficient production has reduced the amount of raw material needed to begin with, Ferguson said. And much of the material that once was carted off to the landfill now is incorporated into manufactured products.

The plant now produces about 1,000 tons of landfill waste annually.

“The most significant thing for us has been in focusing on yield improvement in the manufacturing process of our data-storage products--the data cartridges people use to back up information and store it,” Ferguson said. “There are so many processes to manufacturing; some are good, some are bad. We just throw away the bad.”

More than 2,000 businesses and nonprofit organizations of various sizes and from a variety of industries applied to the waste management board’s award program. Based on their recycling efforts, 283 applicants received WRAP awards and were eligible for top honors.

Businesses were evaluated on waste prevention, reuse of materials, recycling, procurement of recycled products and environmental education of employees.

“The goal of the program is to recognize businesses in California that are doing outstanding things to reduce solid waste,” said Linda Hennessy, a specialist in integrated waste management and organizer of the program.

“As a sideline of that, it gives us information about these successful companies that we can use, in turn, to be an incentive for other businesses,” she said.

Landfill waste is just one of several areas in which the Camarillo Imation facility and its Minnesota-based parent company have worked to establish environmentally conscious business practices. Ferguson said the company also has focused on cleaning up its air emissions, reducing water usage and creating more environmentally sensitive products.

One of the more significant developments, he said, occurred two years ago when the parent company introduced its dry view laser imaging line of digital products, which allow medical X-rays to be developed without the use of traditional processing chemicals.

More than 3,000 such units are being used in clinics and laboratories in the United States and abroad.

“It not only takes the chemicals for developing film out of the equation, but it also is a huge reduction in having to treat contaminated water,” Ferguson said.

Earlier this year, the product earned Imation Corp. one of nine citations presented by the U.S. Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award. Ferguson said honors such as the Challenge and WRAP awards spur environmental awareness among fellow business operators.

“It helps people see that there are companies that are widely known that really take this seriously, that you don’t have to fight [environmentalism],” he said. “This is a practice that can be part of a successful manufacturing life.”