Recycling effort saves money, earns award

  • Published
  • By Ted Theopolos
  • 88th Air Base Wing Public Affairs
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AFB, Ohio --  Six years ago, Wright-Patt initiated a program to recycle ceiling tiles. To date the base has turned in 1.2 million square feet of ceiling tiles for recycling, which is enough to cover 20 football fields.

Martin Nicodemus, who goes by Nic, is an environmental scientist with the 88th CE Environmental Management Division who started this project.

"One of my co-workers read about Armstrong's recycling program and we started from there and contacted the company on how the program worked," said Nic. "Armstrong pays for freight cost for the old ceiling tiles to be shipped to their plant."

Armstrong World Industries, Inc., located in Lancaster, Pa., is a manufacturing company of floors, ceilings and cabinets. If you work indoors on base and look up, you're looking at Armstrong ceiling tiles.

Nic explained how the process works at the base, from removal from the ceiling to out the dock doors.

"The construction workers have to stack the tiles on pallets when they remove the ceiling. Then we transport the pallets to Building 30258 and machine wrap them in shrink wrap to keep them from moving. The pallets are stored until we have enough to fill a semi trailer. After we have 24 pallets, stacked six feet tall with tiles, we call Armstrong and they dispatch a truck to load them up and transport them to their plant."

"Since the beginning of the program, only Pfizer, Food Town and Microsoft Companies have recycled more ceiling tiles than Wright-Patt," said Linda Neal from Armstrong's Marketing Department.

So far the project has saved the base several thousands of dollars and has diverted approximately 172 dumpsters going to a local landfill. "Our objective is to remove as much as we can from the waste stream," said Nic.

On November 11, Nic traveled to Phoenix to accept an award from Armstrong for the base exceeding the 1 million square foot recycling plateau. This wasn't the first award for the base's environmental management office. In 2004 the base received Most Valuable Pollution Prevention (MVP2) Project/Program Award from the National Pollution Prevention Roundtable.

The recycling project is still going strong, with Building 20126 next in line for their ceiling tiles to come down and be stacked, wrapped and shipped.