King County Awards Kenworth’s Renton Plant with 2011 Best Workplace For Recycling and Waste Reduction Award

The Kenworth Truck Company manufacturing plant in Renton, Wash., recently received a 2011 Best Workplace for Recycling and Waste Reduction Award from King County’s Solid Waste Division for Kenworth’s outstanding efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle. 

“Kenworth is honored to again receive this significant King County environmental award for the third consecutive year,” said Marilyn Santangelo, Kenworth assistant general manager for operations. “The Kenworth-Renton plant is committed to protect the environment through a comprehensive, employee-driven program, which fosters extensive recycling and reduction of waste.”

“Our employees take their daily efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle very seriously, and we thank King County for this special recognition,” said Mike Clark, Kenworth-Renton plant manager.

Under an ambitious Zero Waste to Landfill program, the Kenworth plant has achieved a diversion away from landfills of nearly 80 percent of all materials through the use of recycling bins, returnable shipping containers, reduced packaging material, and waste-stream segregation. Kenworth-Renton’s cafeteria uses food waste composting, and sends waste to Cedar Grove Composting in Renton for recycling into usable compost.

In addition, Kenworth-Renton recently received a 2010 Gold Award from the King County Industrial Waste Program. The award is for compliance with the plant’s industrial wastewater discharge permit, and recognizes the plant for one year of no wastewater violations of any kind covering discharge, permit, ordinance, reporting, self-monitoring, and King County monitoring. The plant has now received the Gold Award for 12 consecutive years.

Kenworth-Renton also has previously received recognition from the National Center of Transit Research for being a best workplace for commuters. The carbon footprint is reduced by a “No Idle” policy, which applies to all vehicles on the plant’s campus, ranging from delivery trucks to employee vehicles.

Kenworth’s plants in Renton, Wash., and Chillicothe, Ohio, both hold the prestigious ISO 14001:2004 certification for effective environmental management systems established to help build Class 8 trucks in an environmentally sustainable manner. Kenworth’s medium duty products are produced at the PACCAR manufacturing facility in Ste. Therese, Que., which also holds ISO 14001:2004 status.

Kenworth Truck Company is the manufacturer of The World’s Best® heavy and medium duty trucks. Kenworth is an industry leader in providing fuel-saving technology solutions that help increase fuel efficiency and reduce emissions. The company’s dedication to the green fleet includes aerodynamic trucks, compressed and liquefied natural gas trucks, and medium duty diesel-electric hybrids. Kenworth is the only truck manufacturer to receive the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Air Excellence award in recognition of its environmentally friendly products. In addition, the fuel-efficient Kenworth T700 equipped with the low-emission PACCAR MX engine was named the 2011 Commercial Heavy Duty Truck of the Year by the American Truck Dealers. Kenworth is also the recipient of the 2010 J.D. Power and Associates award for Highest in Customer Satisfaction for Medium Duty Truck Dealer Service. Kenworth’s Internet home page is at www.kenworth.com. Kenworth. A PACCAR Company.

*Information for this report came from a PACCAR news releases.