Saint-Gobain has installed recycling technology at its gypsum wallboard plant in Nashville, Arkansas, through its building products subsidiary CertainTeed LLC, allowing the plant to recycle and reuse 65,000 tons of materials per year that would otherwise have been disposed of in a landfill.
CertainTeed has invested $1.3 million in the project, which comes as Saint-Gobain continues to implement its new global Grow and Impact strategy, which includes reducing waste and increasing raw material circularity at its manufacturing sites.
A gypsum wallboard is created by pouring and drying a gypsum slurry between two sheets of paper.
Some scrap materials, such as gypsum and paper, are typically generated whenever a production line is started or shut down, or when production equipment is changed to produce different sizes of wallboard.
The new recycling technology in Nashville works by grinding down waste gypsum and waste paper into fine particles, allowing the plant to capture and internally recycle the materials, which are then sorted and reintroduced into the plant’s production process.
Today, each wallboard manufactured at CertainTeed’s Nashville facility contains some recycled content made possible by this new process, and the company intends to increase the amount of recycled materials in its gypsum wallboard in the coming years.
“We remain laser-focused on reducing waste, reducing our consumption of natural resources, and increasing recycling and circularity throughout our value chain in Nashville and at our manufacturing sites around the world,” said Jay Bachmann, vice president, and general manager of CertainTeed Gypsum.
“We will continue to seek ways to reduce our environmental footprint while increasing our company’s positive impact on our customers and the communities in which we operate.”
The Nashville plant and its nearby mine are located on 3,500 acres of land in scenic southwest Arkansas. The plant and mine now employ nearly 200 people.
