A Recycling Success

Electric Cars & Flagship

The founder of this electric automobile manufacturer wanted his factory to be as clean as the cars he builds. Flagship Facility Services is helping to deliver on that brand promise, thanks to a unique recycling program that Flagship manages onsite at this client’s 6.5 million square foot manufacturing footprint. In a recycling success story, their trash-to-landfill levels are at record lows – 99% of its waste is recycled and avoids landfill – thanks to Flagship’s facility expertise and innovative management team.

The Challenge

The initiative started innocently enough, with a request from management to support the automaker with eight forklift operators in three days. Banking on Flagship’s already-proven reliable staffing competencies, they needed additional support for its growing recycling initiative. From their perspective, Flagship was fulfilling a temporary staffing need, but an important one.

The Solution

Utilizing Flagship’s internal operations expertise, and specifically its Mobile Services, Recruiting, and HR resources, they quickly recognized Flagship’s onsite leadership as integral to the plant’s recycling operations and constantly changing production goals. Flagship quickly became a regular at their internal monthly operations meetings, and rapidly began to perfect the plan’s recycling processes and working toward the goal of transporting zero plant waste to landfills. Among the many initiatives Flagship took the lead on was a specialty operation that melts plastics and foam into recycled energy blocks that are burnt for energy — and later sold on the energy market. As responsibilities grew, so did the size of its team. Flagship now manages a workforce of 120 full-time employees (FTEs). This includes a variety of roles that include forklift operators, bale masters, safety coordinators, and supervisors and lead personnel.

The Outcome

One of the goals was to have 0% of waste sent to landfill. As a result of the Flagship sustainability program, they sent only .04% of waste to landfill during 2016 as compared to 6% in 2015.

In 4Q of 2016, through their selling recycled material from Flagship the company was able to drive $3.4 million in revenues.

24/7 operation that Flagship has instituted since arrival in 2016 has allowed the client to reach 100% of their production quota.