DC Velocity - IdeaBook 2015

A ce hardware, the big nationwide hard- ware cooperative, introduced sustainable practices to its distribution centers long before the term took on its current cachet. “We’ve always been doing recycling,” says Dirk DeYoung, the company’s facilities engineering manager.

In recent years, Ace has sharpened its focus on sustainable practices, Earlier this year, Ace announced that one of its major import DCs had achieved “zero landfill status,” and another is at 95 percent zero landfill. That means that materials flowing through the facilities are reused or recycled, and that little or no trash is sent to landfills or incinerators. Tim Duvall, Ace’s supply chain director, says he first learned about the concept at a Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) seminar. “I presented it as a goal [to senior management],” he says. “I felt like it was the right thing to do.”

GETTING TO ZERO

The first Ace Hardware facility to earn zero landfill status was the company’s 336,000-square-foot import redistribution center in Suffolk, Va. An analysis performed with Waste Management, Ace’s waste and recycling contractor, determined that up to 90 percent of the facility’s waste could be recycled. The process they implemented allows the facility to mix recyclables into a single stream, which is later sorted by Waste Management for sale and reuse. As a result of that effort, the facility was able to switch from a 30-cubic-yard waste container to two eight-yard containers. “We’ve now reduced that even further,” Duvall reports.

The remaining solid waste is sent to a Wheelabrator waste-to-energy incinerator in Portsmouth, Va. That plant produces steam for the Norfolk Naval Shipyard as well as electricity that it sells to the local utility.

Ace operates another import redistribution center in
Kent, Wash., that has reached the 95 percent reuse or
recycle mark. That effort began subsequent to the effort in
Suffolk. “Once we formulated the process, we rolled it out
[in Kent],” Duvall says. It has proved a bit more difficult, he
says—a surprise to Ace given the Seattle area’s reputation
for environmental awareness. But he says that the project
“has been no less embraced by the people there.”
The next step will be to roll out the zero landfill effort at
Ace’s 14 retail support centers (RSCs)—a step that Duvall
predicts will be “a much more involved process.” But even
without the support centers’ participation in that effort,
the company’s success at recycling has been notable, Duvall
says. “In 2013 alone, across our entire retail support net-
work, Ace recycled more than 38 million pounds or 19,000
tons of pallets, plastic, and corrugate,” he says.