GMi Receives 2016 Recycler of the Year

Mark (left) and George Leasure are presented the 2016 Recycler of the Year Award

Preserve the environment.

The above is a core value of GMi Companies, an ideal we strive to uphold--investing extra time, effort, and expense that sometimes comes with recycling. In addition, our purpose includes service to our employees and community. By donating versus filling dumpsters, and providing our employees with easy opportunities to recycle, it helps us achieve our purpose. Because of this, we were recently honored with the 2016 Recycler of the Year by the Warren County Solid Waste Management District.

Why did we win? Here is a snapshot of how we have reduced our footprint in 2016 thus far.

Recycled YTD through October 2016:
Loose cardboard: 31.5 tons
Aluminum: 15.0 tons
Steel: 13.8 tons
Paper: 4.2 tons
Plastic sheeting: 2.9 tons
Plastic bottles: 1.4 tons
E-waste (computers/electronics): .6 ton

Aluminum
We partnered with our aluminum supplier to ship aluminum to us for our message centers on reusable trees. When the trees are empty, the supplier picks them up and reloads. This has eliminated hundreds of cartons each year, which helps the environment and reduces our costs.

Skids
Our porcelain is received on skids that are reused throughout the plant for material. Our supplier has agreed to use screws instead of nails to make the skids easier for us to reuse. We return skids our wood profiles are delivered on to be reused for the next shipment. Moreover, unusable wood skids are hauled off once a month to be reworked or turned into mulch.

Donate versus filling dumpsters
We choose to donate versus filling dumpsters, which takes more time and effort but fits with our service purpose. When we donated obsolete vinyl to Crayons to Computers, they partnered with Crafts with Conviction to make storage bags that hang over the backs of student chairs in classrooms. We recently donated more discontinued and odd-sized products to Crayons to Computers along with products just outside our specifications. In recent years we donated $50,000 of discontinued product to Convoy of Hope, a faith-based non-profit that serves through feeding initiatives, community outreaches, and disaster response. And, we serve employees by offering discontinued product and material at no cost to them.

Provide employees with personal opportunities to recycle:
• We place recycle bins throughout the building to collect paper, plastic bottles, and aluminum cans.
• We collect used ink cartridges for Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Warren/Clinton counties for recycling.
• We collect plastic grocery bags for the Lebanon Correctional Institution’s up-cycling program. Inmates use the plastic bags to create blankets for the homeless.

GMi Companies continually strives to reduce our footprint, by recycling unused raw goods, making our products with recyclable materials, and donating products and materials to local organizations. With 95% percent of our products made in the United States, we can track these number and continue to evaluate and adjust how we can improve.