Rockwell Collins Wilsonville achieves Leaders in Sustainability Gold Certification

While employed at Rockwell Collins, I was involved in corporate sustainability initiatives in Cedar Rapids and Wilsonville facilities. You can learn more about the work done in Cedar Rapids here.

When I transferred to Portland, Oregon, I discovered that Clackamas County, in which the Wilsonville facility is located (just south of Portland), had a sustainability certification program. To qualify, companies had to have accomplished at least half of the items on a sustainability checklist.

My first step upon arriving at the Wilsonville facility was to set up a green team of people who seemed interested in being involved in this sustainability effort. You can learn more about setting up a green team in my podcast episode from Sept 2016. The county checklist was a great way for us to focus on tangible actions we could take. As we went through that checklist, we found out there were plenty of opportunities and gaps.

The gaps in the county checklist became the problem statement for improvement. The team spent the next year working through the gaps. A county advisor also worked with us, even attending green team meetings to answer questions and help us out.

The major improvements implemented were as follows:

• switching to paper with 30 percent recycled content
• labeling the storm drains to remind people that they are not sewers
• better labeling on the recycling bins
• occupancy sensors in the factory floor
• getting recycling bins in every room

As a result of working through the checklist every week, the Wilsonville facility was awarded the gold-level Leaders in Sustainability certification from Clackamas County, becoming one of the first manufacturers in the county to achieve the recognition.

A summary of the work performed in Wilsonville was written about in the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association magazine in Sept 2016: https://www.fmamfg.org/blog/how-aerospace-manufacturer-makes-sustainability-fly-cross-company

Learn more about the Leaders in Sustainability certification: https://www.wilsonvillespokesman.com/news/sustainability-certification-a-sign-of-the-times/article_1ef75a25-56e7-5ca9-a82f-0a845fbcb753.html