WASI Case Study: Canyon Creek Cabinet Company
Point of Contact
Deborah Purce, dpurce@uw.edu
Description
This Washington Applied Sustainability Internship (WASI) project aimed to identify and minimize wood waste from the Nested Based Cell (NBC) router process, focusing on usable wood scrap that could be recycled back into production. The project also included recommendations for improving waste reduction practices.
For each cabinet line, Canyon Creek uses different materials to produce the particular parts. The intern researched the potential of usable scrap by material. The largest quantity of the total usable scrap waste originated from ¾-inch material (56 percent), followed by the ½-inch material (20 percent). Many of the ¾-inch and ½-inch materials are high-volume and high-dollar materials, making recovery efforts more favorable.
Analyzing the recycling of usable scrap back into production revealed that recycling more of the usable scrap and optimizing for high-value parts could increase material and dollar recovery. If a 73 percent recovery rate is applied to all recyclable usable scrap, Canyon Creek could save $464,675 annually by avoiding new material purchases. After eliminating the need for off-site disposal and energy to operate the grinder, Canyon Creek could save a total of $537,104 per year.