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Environmental Stewardship
At Innovive we know the most important thing we can do to reduce our impact on the environment is to improve our products and services.
- This is why we are taking responsibility for our products from cradle to grave:
- Innovive Disposable Caging is fully recyclable.
- All our products are BPA-Free
- We are committed to energy efficient production methods.
- Innovive Products significantly reduce our customers utilities, water and chemical usage.
- Innovive Caging nest densely to optimise shipping and storage.
- We work toward a zero landfill impact for our entire product line.
- To this end, Innovive has made a significant investment in recycling infrastructure including:
- A 10,000 sq ft recycling center in Southern California
- An internally developed high capacity plastics separation and granulation line.
- Bedding separation operations for a number of local markets
- A dedicated fleet of recycling vehicles.
As a result, we are now offering closed-loop recycling services for customers in key markets on the East and West Coast and custom recycling solutions for larger customers elsewhere.
Environmental Stewardship
1. The Innocage® - green from the start
From inception, Innovive has embraced the concept of sustainability: we advocate continuous innovation and improvement in applying sustainability principles in the manufacturing, distribution, use and disposition of our plastic material. We have integrated sound environmental practices in engineering, production and the delivery of all our products.
UP TO 70% POST-CONSUMER-PLASTIC
Our thermoformed plastic is made from post consumer plastic reclaimed in California. We estimate that in 2010, we will divert over 10,000,000 plastic bottles from California landfills.NOTE: other caging manufacturers often claim to use 100% recycled plastic; however, often they count plastic scrap from manufacturing processes as recycled. At Innovive, we believe that only post-consumer plastic should be included in calculating recycled content.
SOLAR-POWERED
50% of the energy used for the manufacture of our cages comes from a 10-acre photovoltaic "sun farm" that generates 1.1 megawatts of CLEAN, renewable energy. This installation produces about 1% of all of CA solar-generated power. The other 50% is supplied by the California Grid.WATER-CONSCIOUS manufacturing
The cage manufacturing plant uses a closed-loop water recycling system.LOW ENERGY USE per part
Efficient production and state-of the-art equipment results in extremely low energy use: 0.002KWH per part.
PACKAGING
We constantly review structure and design of our boxes in order to minimize the amount of cardboard used for packaging our products.
IRRADIATION
By using individual product dose mapping, maximizing cycle loads and using both gamma and electron beam irradiation we are able to minimize the energy load required for irradiation.
LIGHTER CAGES
All Innovive products are lightweight and nest densely to allow efficient packaging, which in turn, reduces transportation emissions. For example, 2000 cage bottoms fits on a single pallet.BETTER PACKAGING, BETTER ROUTING
Our customer service team works with every customer, on every order they place to reduce delivery mileage, optimize loading efficiency and use shared container load shipping.We work closely with our transportation companies to maximize the use of rail and backhaul routing, particularly for supporting our closed-loop recycling service.
2. PRODUCT USE - sustainable use practices
Innovive Disposable Rodent Caging System conserves energy and materials, as well as prevents pollution.
LOWER ENERGY USE at customers' sites
Traditional cage washing operations have extremely high utility burdens and are responsible for high CO2 equivalent emissions.The Innovive recyclable rodent caging system eliminates cage washing and sterilization from vivarium operations. Running a vivarium without a cage wash lowers facilities' energy use, water consumption, and detergent cost; it also lightens the HVAC load (high HVAC load is needed to offset heat generated by a traditional washroom, often 50% or more of the total HVAC expense of the animal program).
3. SUSTAINABILITY - starts at home
All Innovive disposable caging products conserve energy and materials, as well as prevent pollution during their intended use.
From energy-efficient lighting with motion sensors for automatic shut-off, to effective use of natural light in our assembly and warehouse area, from investment in High Density storage systems, to low flush toilets and water efficient landscaping and finally to our own recycling centre where we process and resell plastic and metal scrap from our own operations, we take conservation seriously.
