Oct 30 2007
Award-winning American Clay Enterprises returns to the Greenbuild International Expo to showcase its all-natural, eco-friendly earth plasters, and to announce the company's new recycling program. American Clay Earth Plasters focus on the inherent qualities of clay--longevity, mold inhibiting, temperature moderating, dirt repelling, humidity controlling, sound attenuating, flexible, repairable and they contain no VOCs. For the November 6 - 8, 2007, event, American Clay will exhibit in booth #942 at the McCormick Place West Building in Chicago, IL. In addition to ongoing demos of the clay plaster at the booth throughout the show, American Clay's new packaging materials will be front and center. And for those who stop in, American Clay will be offering a chance to win a spa weekend in Santa Fe, NM.
As one of the largest "green" expos with more than 850 exhibit booths and internationally renowned leaders and innovators of the green building movement in attendance, Greenbuild presents the perfect opportunity to announce how a company already recognized for its thoroughly sustainable product contribution to building and design is constantly checking itself to innovate behind the scenes.
The first thing American Clay did a year and a half ago was change the dry plaster bag from vinyl lined burlap bags to unbleached, cotton muslin, made in the U.S. "The goal is to recycle 30% of these bags within the program's first year. Our altruistic goal is 100%, but we will never see that because many of our applicators use the bags for projects of their own," says Croft Elsaesser, American Clay co-Founder and CEO. "We can reuse and recycle the muslin bags through the production process twice by keeping track of their lot number. After their full cycle, our plan is to produce enough cotton shopping bags so that we can periodically sponsor a day of giving out these bags at a local food store, such as Whole Foods. That way, we continue to help reduce the overall resource consumption of plastic and paper shopping bags."
Next were the jars containing the color packs. After realizing they were ending up in the landfill, American Clay switched to a polypropylene bag (Type 1 LDPE) which is recyclable in most states and cities. The 5-gallon plastic containers used for the sealers are also 100% recyclable.
American Clay's recycling program was announced to its distributors and dealers in August, but began in earnest Oct. 1st. The company so far has received one box of 25 bags from an applicator in Colorado, and 50 from local New Mexico builders and applicators. The company offers incremental prizes for returns, and will pay for shipping if sending 50+ bags at once. American Clay is also working with several municipality recycling centers in the area to transform its current industrial content into post-consumer recycled content, "in line with the current green movement's goals," states Elsaesser.
American Clay's mission is to better the planet, through their commitment to healthy solutions for beautiful, calm, and healthy environments. To that end, already established environmentally friendly practices as a company are:
- Their products qualify for up to 7 LEED credits on LEED certification projects
- Their manufacturing uses low inherent energy to produce our products. i.e. 250 tons of material costs $45 in electricity.
- They use no water in manufacturing.
- Plaster is shipped dry to save shipping energy and cost. (Additional 20 pounds of water if sent premixed.)
- They ask that no one use perfumes or chemical emitting materials when working.
- With their recent facility expansion, one factor in site selection was the closer proximity to where many of their employees live, cutting driving distance.