Waste

169,382metric tons of waste disposed of – a 19 percent reduction from prior year and 8 percent from 2012
4^%decline in total waste disposal intensity from 2016 and 15 percent from the 2012 baseline

The more efficient we are in using materials to make our products, the less waste we produce, the fewer resources we consume and the more money we save. That is why we first work toward absolute material utilization throughout our manufacturing processes followed by eliminating, minimizing, reusing and recycling the waste materials we do produce.

We employ waste mapping to track waste streams back to their sources in our facilities worldwide. Using lean manufacturing methodologies, each facility eliminates or minimizes the identified wastes one source at a time, typically starting with the highest-volume or highest-cost waste stream identified through the mapping process. We explore reuse and recycling options for wastes that remain.

Our Resource Management Subcommittee of our Sustainability Committee is helping us move beyond manufacturing to other areas in the company, such as product formulation and raw materials management, where waste can be eliminated or minimized.

We measure our performance through total waste disposal, which includes landfilled, incinerated and treated waste. Due in part to recent divestitures, we met our goal of a 10 percent reduction in our total waste disposal intensity by 2020 from a 2012 baseline in 2016. We set the following new goals for 2018 onward:

25 percent reduction in total waste disposal intensity by 2025 from a 2017 baseline.
Achieve zero landfill status from process waste at 35 percent of PPG manufacturing and research and development locations by 2025.

In 2017, we disposed of 169,382 metric tons of waste, which was a 19 percent reduction from prior year and 8 percent from 2012. Our total waste disposal intensity declined 4 percent from 2016 and 15 percent from the 2012 baseline.

Total Waste Disposal Thousand metric tons
2012	183.67
2013	185.89
2014	220.50
2015	213.06
2016	209.59
2017	169.38

Excludes waste associated with coating application processes and a 2017 furnace rebuild at our Lake Charles, Louisiana, plant. We divested our flat glass and European fiber glass businesses in 2016 and remaining fiberglass operations in 2017.

Total Waste Disposal Intensity Metric tons per 100 metric tons of production
2012 Baseline	4.70
2013	4.26
2014	4.87
2015	4.50
2016	4.16
2017	4.01

Recycled or Recovered Waste Percent
	Non-hazardous Waste	Hazardous Waste
2013	25	48
2014	23	45
2015	27	48
2016	25	51
2017	17	50

Remediation

Some of our past waste-disposal methods, which were legal and accepted industry practices in their time, can require environmental remediation or land reclamation to meet today’s regulations, our stringent internal standards or stakeholder expectations.

We use a life cycle approach to assess and manage environmental issues and impacts at all of our facilities. A site assessment, which we require at various stages in a facility’s life cycle, provides an environmental evaluation according to standard industry practices. The assessment determines what, if any, remediation activities or restrictions will be implemented to meet our ultimate goal—each facility is in a condition in which it can be reused safely and productively.

Read about specific remediation projects in our 2017 annual report.

Spills and Remediation

Our facilities have strong management practices in place to prevent spills and releases, and our corporate spill-elimination standard requires the establishment of a spill-elimination program at each facility.

The program consists of the following steps:

Assessment of a facility’s spill elimination performance;
Improvement plans based on prioritized assessment of risk;
Corrective action plan with defined dates; and
Completion of planned action.

An effective tool used by our locations is spill-elimination workshops. During these events, employees from various functions use a rapid improvement process and checklist to assess their facilities to identify areas for immediate improvement, as well as opportunities for longer-term action planning.

We track our progress by measuring total spills and releases per 1,000 employees. Our thresholds for reporting a spill are stringent, allowing us to identify issues before they become significant. These thresholds vary by material and government-reportable levels, with the lowest threshold at 11 pounds (5 kilograms). Our median spill in 2017 was 550 pounds (249 kilograms), with 99 percent contained onsite.

Our goal is at least a 10 percent year-over-year improvement in our spills and releases rate. While we’ve achieved a 21 percent reduction from 2012, we fell short of our goal in 2017 with a 24 percent increase over prior year. Key factors were an increased emphasis on preventive maintenance, more movement of containers holding liquids and human error when transferring liquids from tanks.

In mid-2017, we launched the Walk the Line initiative to refocus our employees on spill prevention. Operators are required to walk the production line prior to transferring a liquid from one point to another. We are confident this will reduce incidents related to pumping liquid to a wrong tank or one that is already full, as well as leaving a drain valve open somewhere in the system.

We began seeing a decrease in spills in the latter part of 2017, and we expect that trend to continue in 2018. We will be implementing a new goal to achieve at least a 65 percent improvement in our spills and releases rate by 2025 from a 2017 baseline.

Spills and Releases Rate Total spills and releases per 1,000 employees
2012	2.32
2013	2.13
2014	2.08
2015	1.66
2016	1.48
2017	1.84

Scrap reduction minimizes hazardous waste

Reducing production scrap led to an 18 percent decline in related hazardous waste between 2015 and 2017 at our U.S. Aerospace facility in Mojave, California. The initiative also delivered a 21 percent cost savings during the same period.

As the Mojave facility’s scrap rate crept upward, so did its hazardous waste. To reverse the trend, the facility formed a scrap reduction team that focused on:
Partnering with raw material suppliers to reduce product variations that result in scrap;
Working with PPG’s research and development team to explore changes to processes and product formulations;
Engaging and educating operators to reduce variability in the manufacturing process; and
Conducting monthly reviews of non-conforming material and product to minimize inventoried scrap.

The efforts decreased production scrap by 70 percent.

Waste transformed into product

In partnership with major metal office furniture manufacturers, our Industrial Coatings facility in Grand Haven, Michigan, takes back its customers’ waste powder coatings. The plant recycles this powder into a coating that the same customers use to coat the interiors of drawers and other related surfaces.

In 2017, this closed-loop recycling process recaptured 662 metric tons of powder coating waste, which was converted into more than 900 metric tons of finished product.

Taking on spills

In two years, our Architectural Coatings facility in Birstall, United Kingdom, reduced its spills and releases rate by more than 65 percent by driving improvement through a concerted Spill Elimination Program.

Employee workshops, spill assessments, trend analyses, incident mapping, spill elimination surveying and employee communications are just a few of the actions taken since 2015, when the location posted a 4.36 overall spills and releases rate. At the end of 2017, the rate had declined to 1.47.

Less solvents, less hazardous waste

At many of our locations, reducing and recycling solvents used in cleaning operations are positively impacting the amount of hazardous waste we produce.

At our Industrial Coatings facility in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, an analysis of the amount of solvents used for rinsing versus the minimum needed eliminated 885 metric tons of solvents annually.

At our Mojave, California, facility, new distillation equipment is recovering two solvents from process water. This has reduced related hazardous waste by 85 percent and an equal decrease in related disposal costs each year.

Aerospace facility buttons up hazardous waste

Operators in our sealants production department at our Aerospace facility in Seattle, Washington, take a small “button” sample from each tube of sealant to fulfill testing requirements. After a lab technician pointed out the size of the buttons varied by operator, the facility initiated a project to standardize the sampling process to reduce waste and increase the amount of saleable product.

Operators participated in a competition to produce the smallest button acceptable for quality control. This new standard has resulted in a 2 percent reduction in hazardous waste and 1 percent increase in saleable product annually.

Tianjin has 3,800 reasons for hazardous waste reduction

Empty drums that contained a raw material used at our Industrial Coatings facility in Tianjin, China, were classified as hazardous waste. Today, those same drums are used to package the finished product produced from the raw material.

The plant now rinses empty drums to remove all traces of the raw material, with the rinse water reintroduced to the production process. The change removes more than 3,800 drums–or 76 metric tons—from the plant’s hazardous waste stream annually and saves more than $83,000 in new drum purchases.

Reduce, concentrate, reuse

By focusing on these three priorities, our Architectural Coatings facilities in the United States and Canada reused 1.2 million gallons of recycled paint in their manufacturing processes in 2017.

Manufacturing paint is a batch process. When switching from one batch of paint to another, the entire tank, piping, filter and filling machines must be cleaned with water to avoid contamination. The wash water typically comprises one-quarter paint and three-quarters water, with typical paint yield loss of 1 to 1.5 percent per batch. To reduce this loss, the business shared best practice, conducted monthly meetings and workshops and increased operator awareness.