This interview with Tom Coffman, former Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships with Deffenbaugh Industries, covers the topics of sustainability, recycling, green ideas, and the services that Deffenbaugh Industries and Deffenbaugh Recycling provide to the Midwest.
Total Reading time: 5:00 minutes.
1. What are 4 things that anyone can do, right now, to be better at recycling?
Tom: Eliminate plastic bags, eliminate plastic bags, eliminate plastic bags, and eliminate plastic bags from recycling containers. Plastic bags are a menace when they get to the recycling facility. They gum up our systems and they blow all over the place. Most grocery stores have containers for recyclable plastic bags.
2. What is exciting to you in the area of sustainability?
Tom: I think the growing awareness, support and public interest around sustainability issues has been very heartening. Whether it is the food people eat, the homes they build and maintain or the way they handle their yard waste, you can see behaviors continue to move toward greater sustainability.
3. What is your favorite innovation that you have been a part of at Deffenbaugh Indsutries?
Tom: There are three innovations I’ve seen in the past 20 years at Deffenbaugh Industries that I think are particularly cool. The move toward automated collection for residential trash and recycling has been a great step forward, as has the implementation of a single-stream recycling system. And the fact that we collect and process approximately 15 million cubic feet of landfill gas per day, which is used to serve the equivalent of 5,000 homes daily, always impresses me. Continue Reading