While the RV industry does take some heat for what some consider wastefulness, a small move in the overall scheme of things shows progress can be made.

Elkhart County, Indiana is probably the ‘mother lode’ of all RV manufacturers in the United States. Now it’s home to an interesting recycling effort. Picture your new RV coming off the production line–a solid wall of material confronts line employees, intent on installing doors and windows. What do you do with the “cut outs” where those doors and windows go?

In 2007, two million pounds of such cut outs were redirected away from the area landfill, and instead sent on down to an Elkhart county window manufacturer. Nappanee Window takes the loads of scrap materials and reforms them into RV compartment doors. Not a bad approach to reuse.

“By capturing this waste and reusing a lot of the material, it helps lower the cost of the customer for the finished product they buy from us. And it makes everyone more profitable, which is what we’re all in business for,” says Josh Kanagy, the company’s marketing director. It didn’t hurt the company to get recognition for their efforts from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management for their recycling work, either.

Photo: Sidewall scrap awaits re-creation.  wsbt.com photo.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 10th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under RV manufacturers, conservation, general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.