John:
In McKesson Packaging Services, we take bulk pharmaceuticals and repackage them into blister packages for use in hospitals and long-term care facilities. This process obviously creates a lot of waste. We would send four 40-yard dumpsters full of cardboard and plastic to the dump each month.
Tommy:
I used to work for a plastics company and I realized that the pill bottles we were throwing away were high-grade and recyclable. So, I contacted a local plastic recycling organization and they said that they had a use for the types of plastic that we threw out.
We found a plastic grinder for less than $2,000 that would enable us to turn the plastic bottles into pellets, which was the format that the recycler needed in the first place.
John Foley, Receiving Associate
Tommy Morris, Material Staging Associate
McKesson U.S. Pharmaceutical
Concord, NC
John Foley and Tommy Morris
John:
With the new process, by grinding bottles and sending the plastic to the recycler, we're able to save about $400 in production costs on each batch of bottles. We go through about 80 batches a month, so it saves about $384,000 per year! Plus, the plastic recycler pays us about $3,600 each year for the plastic we recycle. We expect to recycle approximately 2 million pill bottles weighing more than 100,000 pounds every year through this change.
