July 25, 2007—Fujifilm has announced that its primary US manufacturing complex, located in Greenwood, SC, will begin using methane gas from a local community landfill to power approximately 40 percent of the facility’s operations. Fujifilm says the project will help the company reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 10%, significantly reduce energy costs, and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.
Through an arrangement with Greenwood County and Methane Credit, methane gas will be extracted from the landfill and piped into the Fujifilm complex, where it will then be used in two of the facility’s four boilers. The facility will use approximately 197 billion BTUs of methane-generated energy from the landfill per year—reportedly equivalent to the amount of energy used to heat more than 5,000 homes each year.
By using the methane as energy Fujifilm is preventing methane emissions—which are more than twenty times more damaging to the ozone than carbon dioxide, notes Fujifilm—from being released into the atmosphere from the landfill. Greenwood County was facing a deadline imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reduce or eliminate methane emissions from the landfill. The county’s other option was to flare, or burn-off, the gas at the landfill.
This project is one of a range of sustainability measures Fujifilm says it is implementing worldwide. By 2010, Fujifilm intends to reduce global energy consumption at its large manufacturing facilities by 10% from its 1999 numbers, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 20% from its 1990 numbers.
For more information about Fujifilm’s Sustainability measures, visit the company’s Web site.
