Jersey City, NJ keeps its streets very clean. The street sweepers go through the streets in the morning twice a week, and everyone who works in the area has to park on the sidewalk (if you don't park on the sidewalk you'll get a ticket!) until the street sweepers are done. Afterwards, everyone moves their cars from the sidewalk back onto the street. It's a bit unorthodox, but it's tight quarters in Jersey City and the streets are always diligently maintained.
Just as Jersey City's streets are kept clean, pulp and paper mills must have housekeeping diligently maintained. With rising raw material costs, heavy environmental regulations, and continuous changes in the industry, diligent housekeeping ensures both operational efficiency today as well as paving a positive pathway for the future.
How?
Housekeeping effects are far-reaching.
Case in point, robust housekeeping is a key part of environmental compliance, and compliance is essential for the wide range of hazards at the mill, such as sawdust, emissions, and chemical byproducts. In fact, "establishing or upgrading simple housekeeping and preventative maintenance procedures often can solve a multitude of environmental woes." (EHS Today). And who wants the EPA or OSHA for a long visit?
(And speaking of housekeeping, just how many mill fires, reported, and unreported accidents per year are due to housekeeping issues?)
Closely related to environmental compliance is waste management: and not only waste management, but utilizing the waste and turning it into the sorts of things our parents and grandparents couldn't even dream of - like rayon, bioplastics, and smart materials to name but a few. For all this, and especially environmental compliance, diligent housekeeping is critical.
Because when auditors come and they see housekeeping is not in order, that's an automatic red flag. - A good thing to avoid.
Lastly, how can housekeeping affect the future of the pulp and paper industry? Interestingly enough, innovative technologies like AI-powered waste sorting and robotic systems for cleaning hazardous areas promise to enhance efficiency. Better housekeeping through programming, in this case.
As much of the pulp and paper industry changes toward a more bio-based, circular economy, integrating smart technologies helps streamline housekeeping practices. This makes housekeeping an ever-changing area for research, redefining how mills maintain clean, efficient, and eco-friendly operations.
So be certain to stay diligent with housekeeping. The benefits go far beyond a clean, organized, and safe worksite. Robust housekeeping certainly won't solve every problem. But without it, you'll have many problems that are entirely avoidable.
Join us in August when we discuss... corruption.
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