Employee Q&A: Water Use and Treasure Hunts at Amarillo
Our people making a difference is a series featured throughout Owens Corning’s 2023 Sustainability Report.
Working in our Composites plant in Amarillo, Texas, Josh Casemier oversees utilities maintenance and helps with other capital projects as needed. In his five years with Owens Corning, he has been actively involved in many initiatives that help us make our sustainability aspirations happen throughout our operations. This year, Josh took part in the Treasure Hunt in Kansas City, Kansas, where he collaborated with other Owens Corning employees and the U.S. Department of Energy to discover low-cost/no-cost improvement opportunities. Josh’s focus on the day-to-day aspects of managing water use gives him a perspective on responsible consumption.
On the need to be purposeful about water use
If you don’t focus on water usage, your usage is always going to kind of go up. It’s never going to be flat if you’re not focusing on it, so it’s really important to be intentional — to stop little leaks before they turn into big leaks. We can also see what low-cost/no-cost solutions are available. For example, our scrubbers clean the air with water. The overspray water was discharged to wastewater. We basically took the overspray and instead of going to wastewater, returned it back to where it would get recycled. So for about 200 feet of PVC pipe, we’re going to save millions of gallons a year
On the benefits of participating in our Treasure Hunt
One of the biggest takeaways was how much a small leak adds up in a year. It can be quite significant, depending on your water rate and multiplying that by 60 minutes an hour, 24 hours a day — you end up using quite a bit of water just even on a small leak. It really opened my eyes to have that cultural mindset to fix little things when you see them. And the collaborative aspect really helped us go further than the sum of our parts. People come from all different backgrounds, walk through a plant, and bounce ideas off each other, and something can stick out to somebody that might not have stuck out to you.
On the importance of having ambitious goals for water consumption
Amarillo is located in a water-stressed area. We don’t get a ton of rain every year, and Amarillo is also one of the heaviest water users in the company. So we’re managing a lot of our water-intensive processes, looking at ways we can recycle and reduce water while still making sure that we’re producing quality fiberglass for our customers. I think setting a high standard for what we want to achieve by 2030 is definitely unique — we’re really trying to take a big, big swing and knock down some of our usages.
