Governor’s Sustainability Award Submission

Solid Waste Reduction, Resource Conservation & Clean Green Certified

Roscoe was founded in 1921 on the principles of sustainability – laundering and reusing textiles that were once discarded. This foundation of reuse has evolved over the years to include a variety of textiles and provides customers with alternatives to disposable products that find their way into landfills containing undesirable soiled materials. Roscoe installed the first wastewater pre-treatment system in the industry and holds the longest record of sustainability.

“Implementing sustainable best practices is not only smart for the environment, it is smart for the bottom line” remarked owner Jim Buik …. “our team members also feel a sense of pride by knowing they contribute to setting the standard in the industry.”

Having won the award in 1999, Roscoe has once again requested consideration for the Illinois Governor’s Sustainability Award for the following six accomplishments:

1. Modified the wastewater pre-treatment process to use inert clay instead of ferric-chloride and installed a sludge filter press that dramatically reduced the solid waste from 60,000 gallons of liquid sludge to 78 cubic feet of de-watered waste annually. Prior to 2015, the non-hazardous sludge, a by-product of the pre-treatment system, was stored onsite until a tanker transferred the liquid to a disposal facility.
2. Deployed reusable bags eliminating 21,000 plastic bags annually.
3. Reduced consumption of water from 2.22gal/lb. to 1.13gal/lb. and BTUs from 2737BTU/lb. to 1516BTU/lb. on 6 million pounds processed annually by upgrading equipment in 2009.
4. Reduced the annual consumption of natural gas by 10% installing high efficiency natural gas unit heaters.
5. Reduced the annual consumption of electricity by 8% while increasing the lighting from 25 to 80 foot candles by installing high efficiency LED fixtures with motion sensors.
6. Clean Green Certification in 2012 and re-certification in 2015 utilizing industry best practices resulting in above industry average resource conservation.

Contact us to learn more about the Chicago Uniform Company and our sustainability efforts