• Giving much to the community and nothing to landfill.

    3M Trifecta Design Green
    Giving much to the community and nothing to landfill.

    • Employee team at 3M plant in Cynthiana, Kentucky works to achieve “zero landfill” status.

      One of 3M’s core values has always been a commitment to the communities where the company’s employees live and work.

      For 550 3M employees in the beautiful bluegrass state of Kentucky, Cynthiana is that community.

      In Cynthiana, employees consistently participate in volunteer activities to help those in need, enhance educational opportunities for current and future employees, and champion environmental efforts.

      In the case of the latter, Cynthiana employees recently reached an important milestone.  

      The 3M plant here, which manufactures such iconic 3M products as Post-it® Notes and Scotch® Packaging Tapes, achieved “zero landfill” status in 2017.

      In 2010, the plant set a goal to become “landfill free.” Step one in achieving this goal was creating an employee team focused on reducing waste sent to the landfill and increasing recycling efforts. Since then this team has made many trips – or “dumpster dives” as team members call them – to the local landfill to identify waste streams that could be recycled.

      By 2016, the plant had dramatically reduced landfill waste, and the plant was recycling or reusing over 95 percent of its waste. To eliminate the last one percent of waste being sent to landfill, the plant leveraged a local waste-to-energy facility.

      The plant had its first zero waste to landfill quarter in the fourth quarter of 2016 and has successfully maintained that status throughout all of 2017.

      This achievement contributes to 3M’s corporate Sustainability goal to achieve “zero landfill” status at more than 30 percent of manufacturing sites by 2025.