News Release - April 2008

The Quest - On the path to sustainability

Companies such as GreenFiber em-barking upon sustainability initiatives are often said to be setting off on a quest – a long jour-ney undertaken with determination, in search of a goal and better place.

At GreenFiber we see the goal clearly and know the direction.

But it’s up to individual organizations such as GreenFiber to blaze their own particular paths to get there, taking into account circum-stance and starting place. That’s what we’re doing, as GreenFiber sets out on the journey.

Like other companies, we can improve how we use natural resources in gath-ering raw materials, operating our plants, packing our products, and ship-ping them. Moreover, well beyond what we can do ourselves inside GreenFiber, we have in our products a resource that many other people can use to protect the en-vironment. We are truly undertaking the quest in partnership with our customers, helping each other along the way and succeeding to-gether.

The Quest newslet-ter is being pub-lished to share with all GreenFiber em-ployees news and perspectives about our sustainability initiative and activi-ties relating to it, including the contri-butions and suc-cesses of employees across our family of plants. We hope to spark discussion about sustainability topics and encour-age everyone to embrace sustainability in your own lives and work. We will wel-come not only your suggestions and questions but also your active participa-tion in the quest.

Dennis Barrineau
President

Taking another look at transportation

Did you know that shipping costs rank second only to fiber costs when it comes to making a bag of insulation?

And did you know that (according to an EPA report) for every gallon of diesel fuel burned, approximately 22.2 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) is released to the atmosphere? When you consider that a tractor trailer rig averages about five miles/gallon, it means that for every 25 miles traveled, a heavy duty diesel engine emits about 100 pounds of greenhouse gas.

Since the beginning of the year, taking another look at transportation has been a top priority for GreenFiber employees Charles Graham and Matt Holbert.

In 2007, GreenFiber launched the Web Freight Pro software to optimize ship-ping. The software helps us pair half loads, efficiently route deliveries, and track our shipping performance.

To take our shipping optimi-zation even further, this year Charles and Matt have de-veloped a Transportation Strategic Plan (TSP) aimed at wringing even more waste out of the system.

One notable improvement already realized is a new loose bag stacking pattern that translates into a 10 per-cent freight cost reduction for our loose load custom-ers. This improvement helps offset the dramatic increases in diesel prices experienced over the last year.

In many locations, diesel fuel now tops $4.00/gallon.

Diesel fuel efficiencies also directly translate into avoided greenhouse gas emissions.

Theres more to come from the TSP in 2008. Expect to see the rollout of a company wide anti-idling policy, im-provements in backhauling, and closer tracking of repair and maintenance work.

These efforts are good ex-amples of ways we can re-duce costs and negative impacts on the environment, by taking another look at the work we do everyday.

Focus on recycling reduces waste

So how much is 100 tons? It’s the weight of 12 African elephants, four GreenFiber recycling trucks…or the amount of baling wire and scrap metal recovered and recycled by the Phoenix and Norfolk plants in 2007.

Baling wire is one of the few "clean" residuals generated from the cellulose insulation manufacturing process that can be recycled. It’s some-times difficult to find a ven-dor willing to handle scrap baling wire in a loose form — a scrap metal dumpster full of it doesn’t actually weigh very much!

Other debris that makes its way to our solid waste dumpsters includes plastics, metals, glass, beverage con-tainers, etc., that are re-moved from recycled paper either manually or through automated processes.

We began our look at solid waste by calculating the 2007 solid waste generation rate for each plant. Since the first of the year, GreenFi-ber plants have focused on reducing their waste rates by identifying local outlets for the recyclable materials we can recover, and making sustained efforts to separate recyclables from the waste stream.

We also are reaching out to help our customers manage their waste. The Phoenix, Atlanta, Delphos, and Salt Lake plants have found recy-cling vendors that will accept the plastic bags our products are packaged in. Once the job is finished, our customers are sending empty bags back to us for recycling. It’s another way we can serve our customers and save the environment! See chart below for results:

Innovation at Elkwood

At monthly meetings, Elk-wood (Va.) plant manager Page Timberlake asked her team for sustainability ideas and suggestions -- and they responded with innovation.

Using a spare motor and some unused ductwork, em-ployees Greg Deane, Severo Cruz, Victor Lopez, Pedro Gomez, Everado Santiago, Jose Acevedo , Rudy Lucas, and Martinez Rax came up with a built-in vacuum that discharges back into the process line.

Now when mulch escapes the bagger, it can be re-claimed quickly into the sys-tem rather than being swept out at clean-up time and disposed of in the dumpster. This handy step reduces solid waste generation and makes it easier to maintain a clean work environment.

Fine-tuning our energy use

GreenFiber will have an eye on improving electrical energy use as it makes routine plant upgrades and improvements in the future.

Since GreenFiber’s manufacturing process does not involve combustion of oil or natural gas to operate equipment like furnaces or dryers, we do not directly emit air pollutants from fuel combustion on site. Electricity is the energy source that powers GreenFiber manufacturing operations. Facilities like ours are often said to generate indirect emissions when they pur-chase electricity from utility companies that burn coal or other fuels to generate energy.

In August 2007, the Atlanta Plant invited The Georgia Institute of Technology Industrial As-sessment Center to conduct an energy efficiency audit at our facility through a program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. In October 2007 and February 2008 energy audits were also conducted by local utility companies at the Salt Lake and Tampa plants, respectively. The results of these au-dits were similar in that no recommendations for major retrofits to reduce energy use were made. They did identify measures we can implement cost-effectively to reduce energy use.

The following improvement recommendations were made in the audit reports:

• Install high-efficiency motors when replacement motors are needed, and install variable speed drives to better control motor speeds where appropriate
• Upgrade lighting systems including installing more efficient fixtures and bulbs when replacement equipment is needed
• Evaluate settings on compressed air systems and operate them efficiently

Over time as we replace motors, upgrade lighting, and take other steps to operate more efficiently, we expect to see reduction in energy use of approximately 10 percent. We have begun tracking energy use in our plants in terms of kilowatt hours used per 30-pound bag of insulation manufactured.

GreenFiber, climate change, and the future

Climate change is a real and pressing concern. GreenFi-ber makes a product that helps homeowners directly contribute to addressing that concern by reducing their energy use and emissions. As the largest producer of cellulose fiber insulation in the U.S., our company may have a larger role to play in addressing the climate change problem than any of us currently imagine.

Coal, oil and natural gas are called fossil fuels because they formed from the organic remains of prehistoric plants and animals through expo-sure to heat and pressure in the earth’s crust over hun-dreds of millions of years. Fossil fuels are composed of carbon atoms. These atoms move through a carbon cycle similar to the way water molecules move through a water cycle, although some parts of the carbon cycle may involve millions of years. The carbon cycle involves the land, oceans, atmosphere, and the earth’s interior.

When fossil fuels are re-moved from the earth’s crust and burned as fuel for trans-portation, heating, electricity generation, etc., carbon is essentially being moved to the atmosphere, primarily as carbon dioxide (CO2), at a much faster rate than would naturally occur. In the at-mosphere, CO2 has a heat trapping effect, which is why it is called a greenhouse gas. Residential buildings are major generators of CO2 in the United States as is evident in information pro-vided by the DOE’s Energy Information Administration:

• In the United States, en-ergy related carbon diox-ide emission accounted for 98 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in 2006, and approximately 20 percent of those emis-sions occurred from the residential sector.
• The residential sector generates carbon dioxide emissions from direct fuel consumption (principally natural gas) for heating and cooking, but also from electricity used for cooling, lighting, and increasingly, from televi-sions, computers, and other household devices.

Energy use and the corre-sponding CO2 emissions are getting more attention as the debate about climate change transforms into consensus. From the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) fourth assessment report published in Novem-ber 2007:

• Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice and rising global average sea level.
• Global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions due to human activities have grown since pre-industrial times, with an increase of 70 percent between 1970 and 2004. Carbon dioxide is the most important anthropo-genic GHG. Its annual emissions grew by about 80 percent between 1970 and 2004. The long term trend of declining CO2 emissions per unit of energy supplied reversed after 2000.

A widely held belief is that regulation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is inevita-ble in the next few years. Many electricity generating and natural gas utility com-panies, faced with the chal-lenge of providing afford-able, reliable service in an atmosphere of uncertainty concerning new regulations, are focusing on energy effi-ciency as one sure way to address this issue.

Utility company efficiency measures can and should take many forms, ranging from “demand-response” programs that curtail power or natural gas use during peak periods to helping cus-tomers understand how to make their homes more en-ergy efficient.

At GreenFiber we under-stand that home retrofit pro-jects should employ a whole-house approach involving a tightly sealed building en-velop, properly designed and sized heating and cooling systems, and energy effi-cient doors, windows and appliances. Moreover, proper insulation does pro-vide a significant portion of the savings and emissions reductions achieved through retrofit projects. The DOE web site states that heating and cooling costs in residen-tial homes can be reduced up to 30 percent by properly insulating and sealing air leaks. Cellulose insulation has long been the preferred insulation for home retrofits – whether installed in attics or via “drill and fill” in walls.

Making a real difference in greenhouse gas emissions will require the efforts of all stakeholders in a healthy environment. Homeowners are increasingly aware of the contribution they can make, and GreenFiber products help them do it.