One of the three pillars of Danaher’s sustainability strategy is Environment – our focus on reducing the environmental impact of our operations and products, and helping our customers do the same. Learn how teams at Hach apply DBS techniques to drive success.
Earlier this year, four teams from Hach—each from a different corner of the globe—completed four fantastic sustainability kaizens focused on Operations energy use and waste generation.
Here are the highlights from the teams.
- Hach Shilu, China, was able to identify an additional 5% energy savings during this year’s 4E – Energy Management (4E EM) kaizen, on top of impressive reductions over the past five years. They’ve reduced energy costs by more than half in that time. The Shilu EHS Leader achieved Certified Practitioner (CP) status in the Energy tool following the event.
- Meanwhile, in Hach Ames, Iowa, two teams—one focused on energy and one on waste—were able to identify significant opportunities to reduce environmental impacts at the facility. The energy team found more than 1 million kWh of opportunity in LED lighting, pipe insulation, and HVAC improvements. The waste team recommended improvements that will divert more than 135 tons of waste annually from disposal in landfills.
- In Hach Berlin, Germany, a key energy project will upgrade the heating system at the facility. The end result is a system that will help reduce CO2 emissions by 50%, and reduce purchased electricity by recovering energy equivalent to 7% of current kWh demand. The team also identified a significant opportunity for multi-site collaboration to reduce the amount of pallet waste by as much as 40 tons/year for the Berlin facility alone.
- The kaizen teams in Loveland completed a substantial LED lighting conversion project at the beginning of the year, which should save approximately 1.5 million kWh per year (more than 10% energy use reduction). The team also identified substantial opportunity in standardization of our current waste, recycling, and regulated waste disposal processes ahead of post-COVID return to work.
Hach, like all of the Danaher OpCos, is early in its sustainability journey. There are many more areas of environmental sustainability to explore: everything from packaging waste reduction, to customer and community engagement activities, to life-cycle analysis of products both in production and in development.
