Environmental
Record Featured on PBS
April
23, 1998 
Richmond, Indiana
Although recycling is good, waste prevention,
also known as source reduction, is better.
That's the theme of a
one-hour program created for Indiana public Television featuring SANYO-Verbatim CD Company
and six other Indiana businesses. The show, to be aired in connection with Earth Day, will
run on seven Indiana public television stations from April 23 through May 8.
"In our industry,
SANYO-Verbatim is one of the front-runners in waste-reduction, recycling and eliminating
hazardous materials," says Terry Lainhart, SANYO-Verbatim's general affairs manager.
"We take these matters seriously and have made them a priority."
One of the ways
SANYO-Verbatim has reduced waste, says Lainhart, is by buying manufacturing equipment that
doesn't produce a long sprue, the piece in the center of a compact disc needed in
production process, but then punched out and not used.
"Initially, our
equipment needed the sprue to be about 3-1/2" long," say Lainhart, "but by
purchasing state-of-the-art machinery that requires a smaller sprue, we reduced it to
1-1/4", while actually increasing the quality of the disc being produced."
Two-and-a-quarter inches
of plastic may not seem like much, Lainhart points out, "but it's significant when
you consider that we're producing millions of CDs a month."
Promoting environmental
good health is not the only reason to encourage waste prevention, says Ross Josephson,
Manager of Internal Sales and Corporate Marketing at SANYO-Verbatim. "In the long
run, and sometimes even in the short run, reducing how much we throw away saves
money," he says. "And these cost benefits directly increase SANYO-Verbatim's
competitive advantage."
SANYO-Verbatim, along with
others in the CD industry, have also helped prevent waste by switching from the "long
box" type of CD enclosures to more environmentally friendly packaging. "This is
not only reduces quite a lot of waste at the source, but helps eliminate other types of
pollution," Lainhart notes. "For instance, the "long box" took
up twice as much space on the truck, so twice as many trips were needed to transport the
product."
The TV program is called
"Doing More With Less: Indiana Stories in Waste Prevention,"
To obtain further information on this
news release, contact Ross Josephson,
sales and marketing manager.
Phone: 800.704.7648
Fax: 765.935.0174
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