Sauder Wins Sage Award

October 23, 2011  by in UnCategorized   

By Home Furnishings Business in on October 24, 2011 North America's leading producer of ready-to-assemble furniture, Sauder Woodworking, has won the 2011 Sage Award for environmental excellence.

Based in Archbold, Ohio, the 77-year-old, family-run operation reports nearly $450 million in annual sales and employs more than 2,000 workers in more than 5 million square feet of highly efficient manufacturing space. From the company's Depression-era beginning, when its frugal founder sought to make use of the "leftovers" from his small custom cabinet and church pew business, to today's high tech sustainability initiatives, Sauder has maintained environmental stewardship as a core value. 

Founder Erie Sauder's commitment to stewardship of resources proved an important foundation for weathering the 1980s, when environmental regulation transformed American industry. In 1993, still well ahead of the "sustainability movement," Sauder installed the largest wood-fired, co-generation system in the industry to address the growing volume of wood dust and wood residuals. Since that time, the co-generation plant has consumed an average of 250 tons of wood waste each day to generate four megawatts of power from green, renewable wood fiber. In addition, since the system began operation, Sauder has not taken a single load of wood waste to the landfill.

Sauder has calculated its carbon footprint since 2008 and began reporting these figures to the Carbon Disclosure Project in 2009. Since the 2008 baseline, the company€™s domestic operating division has reduced its overall carbon footprint by nearly 32 percent.

In 2011, the company launched two large-scale process improvements to further reduce its carbon footprint: a $1.5 million effort to convert the lighting in 4 million square feet of space to energy efficient fluorescent fixtures and a $1.7 million project to install new technology on 22 dust collection systems. The new equipment automatically optimizes air flow in the dust collection system to minimize energy use. When complete, these two projects will reduce Sauder€™s carbon footprint an additional 27 percent.

Sauder also designs its products and selects the raw component materials to build those products based on its commitment to sustainability.
 
Over 95 percent of the wood fiber used to produce the wood components of Sauder furniture comes from post-industrial or post-consumer recycled wood. All engineered wood components meet or exceed California€™s formaldehyde emissions limits--the most stringent in the world. The composite wood panels used in Sauder furniture use up to 95 percent of the wood resource, compared to an average of 60 to 65 percent that is used when constructing solid wood furniture. Back panels are constructed using 100 percent post-consumer recycled material. All coatings and adhesives are either water based or are 100 percent solids. None are solvent based.

The Sage Awards were launched in 2008 by the American Home Furnishings Alliance and Cargill's BiOH polyols business to seek out and spotlight environmental innovators from whom others in the home furnishings and bedding industries can learn. The competition is open to retail, manufacturing and supplier companies in both the furniture and bedding industries.

The Sage Award winner receives $2,500 to be donated to the environmental cause or charitable organization of their choice. In addition, the winner and both finalists will be featured in a customized video that spotlights their environmental achievements. The videos will be presented Feb. 22 at the 2012 Furniture Industry Sustainability Summit in Raleigh, N.C., and also will be featured on the Sage Award Web site for a year.