DAYTON, TN — Today, La-Z-Boy’s manufacturing facility in Dayton, Tennessee, marks a significant environmental landmark: it no longer sends any waste to a landfill.
La-Z-Boy’s manufacturing plant in Dayton, Tennessee, is one of the largest furniture manufacturing facilities in the state of Tennessee, and possibly the nation. So when the corporate headquarters in Monroe, Michigan, decided to commit to being a zero-landfill, environmentally responsible company, the Middle Tennessee facility began looking for ways to recycle all of the waste the plant produced.
Today, La-Z-Boy’s goal of recycling 100% of its waste becomes a reality through a cooperative venture with WastAway of Morrison, Tennessee. WastAway, which manufactures a system that recycles garbage and household waste, accepts multiple shipments of waste from the Dayton plant each week and processes it to create an inert, environmentally safe product called “Fluff®.”
The WastAway machinery removes ferrous and non-ferrous metals, glass, ceramics, dirt and sand from the waste, and then converts the remainder into a consistent, predictable, homogeneous, pathogen-free, odor-free, carbon-rich material — Fluff®. Fluff®, a BTU-rich fuel, is converted to pellets which can power electric company boilers, cement company kilns, pulp mills and other sold-fuel users, and because it is a renewable energy source, can reduce their overall greenhouse gas emissions by more than 70% over other traditional fuel sources.
The La-Z-Boy plant in Dayton employs over 1,400 people and is the largest manufacturing center in the La-Z-Boy corporate system. Much of the materials used in the production of their upholstered furniture is recycled or reused; only those waste products that have no other repurposed use are sent to Morrison for processing by WastAway.
The WastAway system was first conceived in the mid 1990s, and the first commercial facility has been in continuous operation since 2003. The patented process received an R&D 100 Award, CERL awards, and has earned accolades from environmental groups worldwide. For more information, visit www.wastaway.com.
