It Pays to Sort Your Solvents

Spending £10 million to reduce solvent risks might seem extravagant, but Crown Wallcoverings know it's an investment in the business as well as the environment.

Crown Wallcovering's Darwen wallpaper mill is one of three factories in the small Lancashire town using thousands of tonnes of solvents each year. Too little regard for solvent safety and local workers, their families and the still green and pleasant Darwen River valley would all suffer.

But cleaning up its act on solvents - the company gets through 3,000 tonnes of the stuff a year - makes sound business sense too. "The more solvents we waste the more money we waste," says health, safety and environment manager Chris Pilkington. "That's one reason why we have solvent recovery here."

Former glories - the company invented continuous wallpaper production on the Darwen site in 1839 - are no longer enough to woo new business. "Our customers, for example, B&Q and Wickes, put pressure down the supply chain and monitor our environmental performance," Chris adds.

Joe Wright, one of about a dozen GPMU reps at the Darwen mill, is encouraged by the improvements, but, like management, he knows there is more work to do.

"Solvents are still the main concern," he says. "You sometimes get listless or fed up, some eye irritation and the occasional solvent bursts can make you feel a bit high. You carry it away with you on your clothes. It's on your breath sometimes."

It's clear Joe has done his homework. He's contacted GPMU safety adviser Bud Hudspith, Jesper Neilsen, from the Danish union SID - solvents are a big issue in Denmark - and regularly plunders computer databases.

The company's efforts, backed by the union, are now beginning to pay off. Installing covers for the colour trays on the older, high-solvent, Halley print machines took some thought but hardly any cash. Solvent vapour levels were halved, saving 5,000 litres of solvent per week - or £50,000 a year. Plans to fit all the roto-gravure machines with covers will up the solvent and cash saving by a further 20 per cent.

The more pricey thermal oxidisers - incinerators - introduced at a cost of £3 million, are starting to curb solvent releases to the general environment. By next year, the company aims to eliminate all untreated emissions.

Crown opted for strict solvent control rather than substitution on the Darwen site's roto-gravure presses, as water-based inks were not considered viable, though it has switched to such inks for cylinder proofing at the Rembrandt site in Morecambe . Union involvement in the health, safety and environment plan is taken as read.

"We have a very positive relationship with our union colleagues," says Chris Pilkington. "The bottom line is we all want the same thing - no-one comes to work to get injured. We can only get improvements if we bring the people on board who understand what we are discussing, and that must include shopfloor workers. Not all the knowledge lies in one place."

Good job too. Latest evidence suggests even low levels of solvent can cause potentially serious short and long-term health problems.

Crown's new Environmental Management Plan, drafted in consultation with GPMU, addresses solvent hazards and a range of other health and environmental problems, from waste control and energy consumption, to ensuring paper is sourced from well-managed forests.

Regular health, safety and environment audits and the involvement of all staff, from the shopfloor to the boardroom, means greening the workplace has more substance than many companies' glossy brochures. Now Joe wants the GPMU to adopt a national environmental policy to strengthen its health and safety work. Union reps are involved at every level of Crown's health, safety and environment structures - almost. "I haven't got to the boardroom yet," says Joe. "That's the next step."