EXAIR’s Commitment to Sustainability

April 22nd is as important as ever at EXAIR

Every year, as the world celebrates Earth Day, we reflect on our environmental impact and commitment to sustainability.  This is significant at EXAIR, because it marks the annual milestone for assessing our progress and environmental goals.  As an industry leader in energy-saving and efficient products, connecting our corporate habits to environmental impact is in our nature. 

This year, we have focused on how to maintain our sustainability efforts and help provide unique solutions for industrial challenges, while also engaging with our community.  Our solutions range from optimizing compressed air applications, to utilizing innovative products to filter and reuse machine sump coolants.  We’ve also become increasingly aware of the need to conserve and properly spray water and other fluids requiring atomization.  In each case, we recognize the benefit provided for the application in terms of throughput, efficiency, and energy/material conservation.

Sustainability:

This year, our machinists collected the remnants and scraps from every CNC and lathe at EXAIR, sorted and stored them by material type, and arranged for their recycling.  We filled dozens of 55-gallon drums with wastewater, aluminum, 303 and 316 stainless steel, and brass, providing them to a local recycling center in the Cincinnati community. 

We also recycled 100% of our cardboard and mixed paper products, 80% of the trash placed in our dumpsters, and 100% of our wastewater, wood, and plastics. 

We continue to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels by focusing on local and regional vendors, preventing long delivery distances.  And, we send over 90% of our invoices electronically, eliminating the need for physical transit via postal trucking.

All the while, we look for ways to do more.

Industrial Challenges:

Our Application Engineers have provided assistance and support for customers in a myriad of industries; everything from ATEX areas in petrochemical facilities, to precision blowoff in food and beverage plants.  In all of these applications, they take the time to understand the applications so that recommended solutions minimize environmental impact and maximize the use of any energy required to solve the problem. 

EXAIR’s patented designs have a proven track record of reducing energy consumption, making them the go-to answer for environmentally conscious companies.

Community Engagement and Corporate Stewardship

Beyond our immediate operational impacts, we remain committed to the benefit of community engagement. This past year saw EXAIR’s first sponsorship of the University of Cincinnati’s Combat Robotics Team.  The young engineers who design, build, and compete in this combat robotics arena are doing so with EXAIR’s support and financial backing. 

This Earth Day, we invite other companies to join us in rethinking their processes to be more sustainable. Every step towards this goal, no matter how small, contributes to a larger change.  At EXAIR, we are proud to lead by example, showing that business success and environmental stewardship can go hand in hand.

We look forward to another year of innovative solutions, community involvement, and environmental stewardship. Together, we can make a significant impact.

Lee Evans, EXAIR

Earth Day 2021

Happy Earth Day from EXAIR!

April 2021 marks the 51st anniversary of Earth Day and it will be observed both virtually and even in person in some locations throughout the world. For EXAIR, this year marks our 38th year helping compressed air users save compressed air energy and the electrical resources associated with generating compressed air. And the 37th year for improving our own efficiencies and processes in order to reduce waste. It is nice to begin to see a few events that have people gathering (safely, of course) to engage together for a positive cause. Over at Earthday.org you can find virtual and in person events to celebrate Earth in 2021. They present a global map for us to become aware of local clean up events, educational opportunities, conservation events and more. Check it out!

EXAIR remains committed to a minimal footprint and continues to focus on manufacturing our products with little impact and doing our part to help protect our environment. We are proud to manufacture efficient products and implement processes and programs throughout our facility to help use our resources wisely. We also recycle everything we possibly can – cardboard, paper, metal, wastewater, plastic. EXAIR also pays us to take some volunteer hours, some of us choose “green” events.

We manufacture and sell Intelligent Compressed Air Products that are specifically designed to reduce the use of compressed air throughout facilities.  On top of that, when you purchase an EXAIR product it will arrive in fully recyclable packaging and, in most cases, is made from a material that will be recyclable should it reach a point it is no longer useful.

Over the past years we continually look for improvement opportunities within our systems and processes. Recently we have…

  • Over the past year, EXAIR recycled 416 cubic yards of paper and cardboard.
  • Recycled 100% of our cardboard and mixed paper products. Of the waste we place into our trash dumpsters – 80% is recycled and 20% is sent to the landfill.
  • We recycle 100% of the metal scrap from our machining processes. The materials we recycle are aluminum, Type 303 and Type 316 stainless steel.  
  • Used our very own Chip Trapper Systems in our manufacturing areas to extend the water-soluble coolant life from 6 weeks per changeover to 6 months per changeover. Keeping our coolant clean allows us to minimize the total amount of wastewater we recycle each year.
  • Minimized our own compressed air use by 1 million cubic feet per year.
  • EXAIR continues to make improvements to the efficiency of our computers and computer servers which require fewer Kilowatt hours (KWH) per day.

EXAIR asks every customer if they accept digital invoices rather than requiring them to be printed and mailed.  We have been able to eliminate over 90% of all printed and mailed invoices. This helps to reduce our resources used as well as the amount of materials that are possibly turned into solid wastes at customer facilities. This also aids to reduces the gas and vehicles necessary to deliver all of these invoices by mail.

Adding to the efforts above, we continue to maintain RoHS compliance on all electronic products, as well as actively track our supply chains to ensure no Conflict Minerals are being sourced and used in our products.

If you have any questions on how we can help your facility reduce their volume of compressed air, contact us.

Thanks for reading the blog and enjoy your Earth Day!

EXAIR
Ph. 1-800-903-9247 Intl Ph. 513-671-3322
www.EXAIR.com

Image courtesy of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Creative Commons License Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)