“In one week, we were throwing away 800 plastic bags from personal-use trashcans,” explained Kelli Martony in 2022, who was then a Project Manager at Atlas Copco Mafi-Trench in Santa Maria, California. “That means that in one year we were throwing away 41,600 plastic bags. The great majority of these were barely filled,” she adds. Martony, now Digital Marketing Specialist at Atlas Gas and Process, was so shocked by this waste of plastic bags that she decided to do something about it.
Martony had the company building’s 160 individual trash cans taken away. In their place she strategically positioned stainless-steel bins in “centralized areas” of the building – each for trash, plastic and for paper. After a short period of initial scepticism from some of her co-workers, people adapted, and “the initiative contributed to our overall carbon-neutral plan and goals at Atlas Copco,” she said.
Martony’s inspiring green initiatives for Atlas Copco Mafi-Trench (which is part of Gas and Process Division) were the backbone of the early days of the company’s Think GREEN program. And this in turn was, and continues to be, part of the wider Atlas Copco Group’s ambitions to support climate protection and science-based climate targets. Such has been the company’s success that it is now a Certified Green California Business, an organization that promotes green business practices.
Earth illustration
“I’ve always cared deeply about the planet,” said Martony. “There is a saying: ‘There is no planet B’. It's accurate. I've always tried to live my life in a very green way and teach my kids to be kind and respectful to the earth and everyone who shares it.” This is exactly the kind of thinking that fed into her thoughts on the Mafi-Trench Think GREEN initiative: by removing the individual trashcans, the company saved on plastic bags and janitorial costs, reduced the need for trash pickup truck visits, and consequently reduced Mafi-Trench’s carbon footprint.
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Making money from junk
Martony worked on Think GREEN in conjunction with her then boss, Randy Dirlam (now General Manager of Atlas Copco Comptec LLC in New York), and Erik Aelmholdt (now Environment Coordinator for Site in California). It was Aelmholdt who provided accurate data on Mafi-Trench’s recycling efforts. Once the recycling scheme was up and running, the trio of Dirlam, Aelmholdt and Martony were immediately on the look-out for a follow-up project. And they spotted the perfect opportunity at the company’s Sinton Road facility, across town in Santa Maria. A former sugar mill, Mafi-Trench had purchased a now discontinued pump business based there some years ago.
By 2019, it was little more than an expensive rented storage space for old machinery. “We stored a lot of scrap components from jobs that were on hold or had been cancelled,” says Martony. With recycling uppermost in their minds, the team contacted local companies to see if the machines and parts could be re-used. They eventually sold everything. “We emptied out the entire facility,” says Martony. “We made a lot of money for junk that was just sitting there. And we are no longer paying to rent this massive facility.”
Since then, there has been further progress and initiatives, one of which is to obtain approval to replace gas-powered shop heaters with electrical ones. A second is a process to electrify the company’s fleet of forklifts that will eliminate propane as a source of energy. And a third example is the aim to be a net zero CO2 emission company by buying carbon to offset emissions.
Recycling Data Chart
Special people
In Q2 2019, the grand total of recycling for Atlas Copco Mafi-Trench amounted to just 20.7 percent of all waste produced at the factory. By Q2 2021 it had leapt to a high of 93.38 percent. And the improvements have kept on coming year after year, hitting 82.1 percent for 2020, 91.2 percent in 2021, and 92.5 for 2022.
Clearly, the company’s green initiatives have generated a lot of support throughout Mafi-Trench. “Helping the environment is the most important challenge of our times,” explained Federico Cioni, Sourcing Manager. The “Atlas Copco Think GREEN initiative puts our organization once again at the forefront of the sustainability spectrum. And let's face it, it takes very little effort to walk up to a recycling bin and separate paper and bottles from regular waste, plus my Fitbit is very thankful! I feel proud to hear that my company is achieving such a high level of engagement in this program. This company is made up of very special people."
Recycling Queen Illustration
Recycling superheroes Illustration
Green personas
With her drive and determination, the impulse for the company’s recycling transformation owed a great deal to Martony. On top of such characteristics, Martony works with a smile on her face and a huge dose of good humour. This included getting people to take up “green” personas in the form of Recycling Superheroes, visualised by the Atlas Copco Brand Studio graphics team. Martony’s superhero, replete with that familiar smile, juggles five symbols representing GREEN values such as water conservation, recycling, composting and more. Federico Cioni also joined in the fun, with his superhero suit and environmental protection shield, while Senior Accountant/Trade Finance Margarita Gibson all-blue outfit focuses on saving water.
Of course, there have been challenges: Covid meant that lots of people were ill and missed work in 2020 and 2021, making face-to-face contact and communication difficult. That’s why it took a year to train everybody in what the new recycling agenda entailed.
Nevertheless, people have embraced the green initiatives, and regular (re)training on recycling and the wider Mafi-Trench carbon-footprint aims is now a core feature of the company’s philosophy. “I love the fact that we had the conversation about recycling – and they didn’t run me out of the building,” Martony remembers, laughing. “We simply let people know that we were not doing well. And that we needed to do better, we owed it to our community to do better, and see what was possible.”
A few years on from the shock of learning just how many plastic bags were being needlessly wasted, Martony and the team had overseen nothing short of a recycling transformation.
Recycling superheroes Illustration