SCA Donates Wood Pallets to Help Heat Greenwich Public Works Building

Every day, SCA’s converting facility in Greenwich, NY, receives shipments of giant paper rolls for converting to SCA products, like napkins, towels and bath tissue. The rolls are supported by wood pallets to keep them stable inside the tractor trailer. Prior to the winter of 2015, once the materials were offloaded inside, the pallets went unused, sitting in an ever-growing pile outside the facility.

Eventually SCA employees began breaking the pallets apart and taking some of the wood home to use in their own fireplaces. But the employee demand wasn't great enough to solve the issue.

Inspired by an idea from an employee to donate the pallets to Greenwich’s Public Works department for heating, SCA contacted the county and made arrangements to have a public works truck pick up pallets from SCA as needed, all year long.

In the summer, obviously, not much wood is needed. But in the fall/winter, public works trucks pick up the wood from SCA twice a month, sometimes more frequently. SCA estimates that they donate nearly $16,000 worth of wood to the Town of Greenwich each year.

Stanley Mattison, Town of Greenwich Highway Department Superintendent, notes that the wood donated by SCA supplements the wood that the town uses to heat their furnace, and is a welcome addition. In particular, the SCA donation enables his department to cut down fewer trees.

For SCA this is also a benefit.

"This is a win-win for both organizations  - providing the Town of Greenwich with access to cost-free wood for heating," says Francois Rousee, converting operations manager for the Greenwich site. "It cuts down on Washington County's costs, reduces the number of cut-down trees, and helps us solve the problem of what to do with the pallets."

One of SCA's four objectives is to be sustainable and contribute to the circular society, which encourages resource efficiency, reuse and renewal over disposal.