Boeing wins 'high achiever' award among sustainability leaders
Boeing wins top prize for recycling all of its carbon fiber waste
Boeing was recognized for sustainability excellence for innovating a way to recycle aerospace-grade carbon composite. Boeing photo
UPDATE: The National Association of Manufacturers saluted Boeing’s innovative carbon fiber recycling initiative as the highest achiever among sustainability leaders on Thursday at their virtual gala.
“This is a tremendous achievement of this team who turned their vision of recycling carbon fiber into a reality,” said Chris Raymond, Boeing Chief Sustainability Officer. “I applaud all of our Boeing employees who are embracing sustainability efforts and making a difference in our industry and in our communities each and every day.”
The National Association of Manufacturers honored Boeing with a prestigious sustainability leadership award for creating a market for recycled aerospace-grade excess carbon fiber and diverting up to one million pounds of solid waste to landfill annually.
“This recognition demonstrates Boeing’s ability to weave sustainability into all we do by moving from the world’s largest consumer of aerospace-grade composite without a plan for waste to today being the only company able to recycle 100% of its excess carbon fiber,” said Bryan Scott, vice president, Environment, Health & Safety.
Boeing generates revenue by selling the excess, which is transformed into laptop cases, car parts, rail-car undercarriages and other products.
A year after launching a partnership with United Kingdom-based ELG Carbon Fibre to recycle excess aerospace-grade composite, Boeing has trained employees and implemented carbon-fiber recycling at 11 manufacturing sites across the globe. Most of the excess fiber comes from Washington state, Australia and Salt Lake City manufacturing sites. Boeing has plans to train companies in its supply chain on the process, starting later in 2020 in Japan.
“After a decade working with academia and industry through technical excellence, we now have a solution to the excess carbon fiber composite waste challenge,” said Pete George, associate technical fellow, Boeing Product Development. “Removing the cured resin without damaging the valuable aerospace-grade carbon fiber frees it up to provide the same performance attributes we value to non-aerospace applications.”
Other large materials industries, such as wood and aluminum, have developed their waste into value-adding materials for secondary markets based on their understanding of their materials, products and technical communities. The same had to be achieved for the reuse of excess carbon fiber to be successful at scale.
“The power of one Boeing means achieving what you thought was impossible at the onset and that is what this award means to me,” said Cindy Chan, environmental engineer, Environment, Health & Safety. “This process is not easy but we worked across the enterprise from operations to engineering to facilities to make our production system more sustainable.”
Boeing is proud to join the recent winners of the Sustainability Leadership Award including Oracle, Dow Chemical, Johnson Controls, Airbus and Cisco.
By Monica Zimmer
