Circular Economy initiative puts Morgan Advanced Materials on the road to greater sustainability

The circular economy principles of re-use and recycle are enabling one global manufacturer to significantly improve its environmental health and safety targets, and turn waste furnace rock into new roads.

Morgan Advanced Materials, a global leader in the development and application of advanced material technologies, has revealed the results of some of its recent Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) activity which saw a major commitment to embracing circular economy initiatives across its global sites. As a result, the UK-headquartered manufacturer has enjoyed instances of a 50% reduction in chlorine use at one of its sites, a 23% saving in natural gas usage at a site, and a seven per cent global reduction of energy intensity across the group. This is in addition to the group achieving a five per cent reduction in water intensity and a one per cent reduction on waste intensity throughout 2015, when compared to the previous year.

Perhaps the most interesting example of a circular economy in action though, can be seen at one of Morgan’s US sites, which is effectively facilitating the re-use of aggregate waste material into temporary road surfaces. The company’s Georgia-based manufacturing facility, which specialises in Thermal Products for high temperature insulation, manufactures a range of products including insulating fibre, fire bricks and fired refractory shapes, which are used to manage heat and reduce energy usage in industries such as petrochemical, iron, steel, ceramics and cement production. The typical form of disposal for these materials is through landfill sites, but Morgan has been working closely with the local landfill operator to re-use the material to construct temporary road surfaces. These have replaced a number of gravel-coated roads in the landfill site. This programme has seen over 6000 tonnes of waste being diverted from general landfill.

The global EHS improvement plan is being led across the group by Morgan Advanced Materials CEO Pete Raby, in conjunction with the company’s internal health and safety initiative, thinkSAFE. thinkSAFE is the Group’s global safety performance improvement programme which is led top down by the CEO and the Executive team. This is supported by an online Intranet EHS resource for all Morgan employees, which has been translated into 17 different languages. The increase in health and safety standards across the group has resulted in fewer workplace accidents, an important achievement. By end of August 2016, the Group had achieved a 41% reduction in lost time accident frequency rate compared to the end of 2015.

Pete Raby, CEO at Morgan Advanced Materials commented: “The dilemma of how to deal with rising energy demand and materials waste will not be solved by one single solution, we need a combination of efforts. Energy efficiency improvements, clean energy initiatives and education to reduce consumption and re-use waste will all make a difference.

“At Morgan, we are driven by opportunities presented by megatrends and this is where our development in materials science and engineering plays a huge role to help other businesses reduce their environmental impact. We are working to continually improve our environmental health and safety standards across the group, enabling us to fulfil our mission to solve the engineering challenges of global industry, in the safest manner possible.”

For more information visit: http://www.morganadvancedmaterials.com/EHS

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