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Brown Printing Company was the winner of the 2010 WhatTheyThink Environmental Innovation Award for Sustainability and Your Plant, which recognized the company’s efforts to reduce emissions, waste, and energy consumption.
Brown takes its commitment to the environment seriously and has a strong program in place that supports both environmental sustainability and responsibility. In 2008, Brown hired an Environmental Engineer that works directly with the Environmental and Safety Manager at each facility to decrease the impact on the environment.
The company's approach to minimizing air emissions, waste, and energy consumptions while pursuing environmental certifications and partnerships has achieved great results toward each facility’s environmental impact. Each of Brown’s three facilities have implemented numerous initiatives including energy efficient lighting installation, free cooling chillers, variable frequency drives, computerized building management systems, and motion sensor lighting installation.
State-of-the-art technology to lower air emissions includes “auto-thermal” RTO systems that scrub VOCs produced in the printing process with over 99% efficiency. A retrofit at Brown's Woodstock, IL facility, allows heat to be re-used in the facility's HVAC system. The computerized building management systems allow us to efficiently control cooling/heating, ventilation, and other electrical/mechanical systems when not in use. Already in place were unique virtual electric load meters by plant area to raise visibility of department and machine usage.
With tracking and data analysis, management can continue to optimize the system and reduce energy consumption.
Benefits to Brown Printing
From 2003 to 2009, Brown increased production while reducing air emissions by 38% (including a decrease of 13% from 2008 to 2009 alone). These improvements were made possible partially through investments in state-of-the-art technology.
The results?
- The “auto-thermal” RTO scrubber saved over 316 million cubic feet of natural gas in 2009.
- Retrofits on the HVAC equipment allow heat to be used in the plants, for an additional 902,000 kWh of savings per year.
- Brown’s free cooling chillers utilize cooler outside air instead of refrigeration units saving 2.5 million kWh per year.
- Each Brown facility overhauled their lighting grids and installed energy efficient lighting and motion sensors, which saves approximately 6.5 million kWh per year.
- Air compressor networking increased total efficiency of the systems and saves 5.2 million kWh per year.
