The Envy of Manufacturers

[Adrienne Selko]

Here is the company that all manufacturers envy. The Hansgrohe Group, based in Germany, has the environment covered at every angle. One of its products, the Pontos AquaCycle, recycles grey water from the shower or bath using an organic, non-threatening biological technique. The hygienically clean water, or gray water, can then be used to do the laundry, water the garden, clean the house and flush the toilet.

But wait it doesn’t end there. Guess where they manufacture this progressive product? They manufacture the products in a production facility in Offenburg, Germany, using environmentally-friendly solar energy equipment. The electricity from the solar energy is fed in its entirety into the Offenburg plant’s power grid and is utilized in eco-friendly shower manufacturing.



The power generator reduces roughly 100 tons of greenhouse gases per year.

And before you say that they are merely following the green trend, the plant has been doing this since 1993!

Of course this type of company continues to search for environmental improvements and is finding ways to recover and reuse the nickel and brass used in faucets and the plastics used in the molding of shower heads and hand showers. Since 2004 the company has been reutilizing over 85% of material wastes that would have otherwise been scrapped and impacted the environment.

Hansgrohe take a bow!

[Brad Kenney]

I agree with you wholeheartedly that this Hansgrohe plant is a thing of envy. It's nice to see sustainable design built into the very fabric of the factory. And the fact that their products are made for the "green pipeline" makes for some great marketing synergy.

Probably more attainable for legacy US manufacturers would be something along the lines of what I described in The Zero Effect article last year (which described the trials, travails and notable successes of Subaru, Eaton and Frito Lay facilities around the country).

The coolest thing Subaru is doing is what I called a "cradle to ladle" byproduct placement cycle with its paint solvent waste:

"A distiller fractions out all the organic material and sells that off, then the char that remains gets sent to a steel mill, where it is used as a non-stick coating for steel ladles," relates Coogan. The end of this long story? A formerly hazardous manufacturing byproduct finds value downstream, eventually ending up at an upstream supplier for SIA -- a closed loop indeed.

No doubt turning its waste stream into a profit center helps ease the pain of so much effort.

[mjschwartz]

Wow, even the tree in my front yard is jealous with green envy. Thanks for a great post!