Area glass company receives award from EPA
American Video Glass Co. is getting the lead out – literally. On Wednesday, Marianne Horinko, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) assistant administrator presented Komei Kusuda, American Video president, with an award for voluntary waste minimization.
Since beginning production five years ago, the company has cut its lead waste disposal by 18,000 tons or more than 95 percent. It has saved the company more than $560,000 in raw material and waste disposal costs.
“That, despite a 25 percent increase in its production,’ said David Allard, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) deputy secretary.
Part of the Sony Technology Center – Pittsburgh, American Video Glass produces front glass panels for Sony’s trademark Trinitron and Wega television sets and funnel glass for the Trinitron cathode ray tubes.
The plant employs about 550 people, part of the more than 3,000 who work at the technology center.
The award was presented to American Video Glass for being one of five charter members in the federal EPA’s new Waste Minimization Program.
Horinko explained the new voluntary program “challenges businesses and manufacturers to become more environmentally aware and adopt a resource conservation ethic that results in less waste, more recycling and more environmentally sound products.’
Horinko, formerly an environmental attorney before being named to the EPA by President George W. Bush last year, said American Video Glass has done “groundbreaking work in waste minimization.
“This facility represents the move from 20th century to 21st century and uses an ethic that encompasses resource management,’ she added. “This is volunteerism at its very best.’
Horinko also said the company’s actions “prove what we at the EPA have said for a long time. If it’s good for the environment, it’s good for business.’
American Video Glass also received the National Pollution Prevention Roundtable’s PBT Cup and the Pennsylvania Governor’s Environmental Excellence awards for its work in cutting lead releases into the environment.
Some of the ways in which the company has worked to cut potential releases of lead and other hazardous materials included eliminating floor drains so materials would not be accidentally released into the sewer system; using gas-oxygen firing to heat the glass tanks instead of gas and air, which reduces the nitrogen emissions; installing dual electrostatic precipitators per glass tank to ensure that one would function while the other is shut down for cleaning; using double-walled sumps and installing a stainless steel liner and high-density polyethylene liner under the plating shop to prevent chrome release.
In reducing its lead use, American Video Glass has used material substitution and recycling including replacing lead oxide with zirconium oxide in the glass panel; recycling 100 percent of the electrostatic precipitator dust collected from the panel and funnel tanks by putting it back into the mixing and melting process, and recycling glass from old televisions received through Sony’s post-consumer recycling program.
“American Video Glass and Sony have shown they can be good stewards in the business environment,’ Horinko said. “Most companies comply with the law regarding the environment but some do more than the law requires like Sony and American Video Glass.’
Kusuda, who has been president of American Video Glass for the past 11 months, noted that conservation and environmental practices are “the right thing to do.
“This honor goes to all the people working here who design and make the televisions,’ he added.
The Sony Corp., Kusuda said, “is constantly trying to protect and improve the environment that we will leave for our children and their children.’
Kenichi Kanna, Sony Corp.’s general manager for environmental affairs worldwide, said Sony supports “the preservation of the global environment. This is a great task for the 21st century. But we want to be an environmental model company.’